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YICTOEIAX  PEOSE  MASTEES 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Feknch  Traits.  An  Essay  in  Compara- 
tive Criticism $1.50 

French  Art.  Classic  and  Contemporary- 
Painting  and  Sculpture $1.25 

The  Same.  New  and  Enlarged  Edition  with 
Forty-eight  Illastrations  ....  $3.75  net 


VICTORIAN  PEOSE  MASTERS 


THACKERAY  —  C ARLYLE — GEORGE  ELIOT  —  MATTHEW 
ARNOLD— BUSKIN  — GEORGE  MEREDITH 


BY 

W.  C.  BROWNELL 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1902 


Copyright,  1901,  by 

CHABLES    SCRIBNER'S    SON'S 


PublUhed  October,  1901 


THE  DEVtNNE  PRESS. 


TO  EDWARD  L.  BURLINGAME 


GENERAL 


CONTENTS 
THACKERAY 

PAGE 

I  Vogue 3 

II  Art 5 

III  Personality 15 

IV  World 24 

V  Philosophy 37 

VI    Style 41 

CARLYLE 

I  Vogue 49 

II  Personality 52 

III  Agitated  Thinking 58 

IV  Reactionary  Philosophy 64 

V  History 72 

VI  Art 77 

vii    Style 82 

VIII    Moral  Cogency 88 

GEORGE   ELIOT 

I  Vogue r    .    99 

II  Psychology 101 

III  Action 105 

IV  Imagination 108 

V  Style 120 

VI  Personality 125 

VII    Development 130 

viii    Philosophy 138 

vii 


CONTENTS 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  ^^^^ 

I  Influence 149 

II  Personality 152 

lu    Literary  Criticism 157 

IV    Social  and  Political  Criticism 169 

V  Religious  Writings 176 

VI    Style 185 

VII    Poetry 191 

RUSKIN 

I    Life  and  Work 205 

II  Medi/Evalism 209 

III  Didacticism 213 

IV  Art  and  Nature 217 

V  Influence  on  the  Public 221 

VI  Influence  on  Art 224 

VII  Style 226 

GEORGE  MEREDITH 

I    Vogue 233 

11    Temperament 238 

III  Characters 243 

IV  Perversity 253 

V  The  Comic  Spirit 259 

VI    Passion 264 

VII    Women    . 267 

viii    Imagination 278 

IX    Intellectual  Eminence 282 


vm 


THACKERAY 


or  THE     '^ 


UNIVERS/TY 

Of 

*'  III  1 1 1  1 1  1 1  ~ijir 


•Kiaruam* 


THACKEEAY 


The  vogue  of  Thackeray  has  steadily  increased  since 
his  death.  He  has  taken  his  niche  in  the  pantheon 
of  English  prose  by  unanimous  consent,  and  it  is 
well-nigh  universally  admitted  to  be  a  very  high 
one.  He  is  already  a  classic.  He  is  the  representa- 
tive EngUsh  man  of  letters  of  his  time,  and  one  of  the 
few  great  novelists  of  the  world.  Nothing  of  the  kind 
is  more  striking  than  the  change  that  has  come  over 
popular  feeling  with  regard  to  his  works.  Instead  of 
cynicism,  he  is  now  reproached  with  sentimentality  by 
his  censors.  Time  has  brought  about  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  man,  and  at  the  same  time  has  modi- 
fied the  popular  craving  for  the  representation  of  life 
as  a  fairy-tale,  and  the  popular  disposition  to  resent 
portraiture  as  calumny.  On  the  other  hand,  with  the 
increase  of  his  vogue,  Thackeray  has  inevitably  become 
to  an  appreciable  extent,  during  the  past  few  years,  the 
prey  of  critical  pedantry;  and  the  elect,  who  once 
plumed  themselves  on  being  his  apologists,  have  begun 
to  look  into  his  case  with  closer  scrutiny,  and  in  some 
cases  with  touchingly  disillusioning  results.     Twenty- 

3 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

five  years  ago  Taine's  essay  was  translated,  and  since 
then  his  view  has  been  gradually  filtering  through  the 
Anglo-Saxon  criticism  that  of  recent  years  has  tended 
so  exclusively  to  interest  itself  in  and  insist  on  art  as 
such  in  all  its  manifestations.  Taking  hold  of  the 
subject  somewhat  tardily,  perhaps,  it  has  felt  a  cor- 
responding obligation  to  treat  it  drastically,  and  what- 
ever has  seemed  to  obstruct  the  easy  working  of  ma- 
chinery laboriously  constructed,  to  elude  definitions 
painfully  arrived  at,  has  had  to  suffer.  Taine  pointed 
out  that  Thackeray  had  the  temper  of  the  satirist 
which  is  the  opposite  of  that  of  the  artist ;  that  this 
was  fatal  to  the  form  of  his  works,  which  were  con- 
sequently greatly  disfigured  by  moralizing  extraneities  ; 
and  that  the  artistic  perfection  of  "  Henry  Esmond  " — 
the  single  and  striking  exception  among  his  works — 
illustrated  with  melancholy  vividness  the  loss  art  had 
suffered  by  the  absorption  •  in  satire  of  such  artistic 
talents.  This  conclusion — based  on  assumption  novel, 
and  therefore  attractive  in  itself,  French,  and  therefore 
definite  and  consistent,  and  tending  to  the  exaltation 
of  art  as  such  —  had  but  to  be  stated  to  be  adopted  by 
those  among  us  who,  "  in  these  days  of  confusion  of 
doctrine  and  lessening  of  faith,"  to  cite  the  words  of  a 
popular  magazine,  "are  turning  for  something  stable 
and  indisputable,  not  to  science,  but  to  art."  More- 
over, fiction  having  become  a  "  finer  art "  since  Thack- 
eray's day,  owing  to  the  vigorous  filing  and  sand- 
paj)ering   .no    doubt  which    it    has    received    in   the 

4 


THACKERAY 

course  of  our  critics'  and  craftsmen's  culture  evolution, 
the  artistic  vulnerability  of  Thackeray  as  an  old 
practitioner  is  logically  deduced.  "  Perhaps  Vol- 
taire was  not  bad-hearted,"  says  Emerson,  "yet  he 
said  of  the  good  Jesus,  even,  'I  pray  you  let  me 
never  hear  that  man's  name  again.' "  And  living 
in  our  day,  and  in  contact  with  much  of  our  criti- 
cism, such  a  consummate  artist  as  Voltaire,  ab- 
sorbed in  satire  as  Voltaire  indisputably  was,  might, 
conceivably  be  moved  to  similar  blasphemy  against 
the  name  of  "art."  The  instinctive  would  at  all 
events  exhibit  impatience  with  the  systematic  critic 
for  deploring  as  inartistic  and  rudimentary  the  fiction 
of  the  foremost  artist  of  English  prose. 

II 

In  any  case,  the  gospel  of  art  for  art's  sake  is 
reduced  to  absurdity  when  it  is  applied  to  the  novel. 
The  novel  is  not  its  own  excuse  for  being.  It  is 
a  picture  of  life,  but  a  picture  that  not  only  por- 
trays but  shows  the  significance  of  its  subject. 
Its  form  is  particularly,  uniquely  elastic,  and  it 
possesses  epic  advantages  which  it  would  fruitlessly 
forego  in  conforming  to  purely  dramatic  canons.  Its 
art  is  the  handmaid  of  its  purpose — which  is  to  illus- 
trate the  true  and  aggrandize  the  good,  as  well  as  to 
express  the  beautiful.  Like  literature  taken  in  the 
mass,  it  includes,  rather  than  is  identical  with,  so  much 

5 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

of  "  art " — in  the  sense  in  which  we  use  the  word  with 
reference  to  inarticulate  art — as  suits  this  purpose.  Its 
sole  artistic  standard  is  fitness ;  its  measure,  the  adapt- 
edness  of  means  to  end.  And  dealing  thus  with  all  of 
life,  it  is  not  sufficient  for  the  novelist  to  "  love,"  like 
Keats,  "the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things."  He 
must  love  equally  the  principle  of  the  true  and  the 
principle  of  the  good.  To  force  the  note  of  "  art "  in 
the  novel  is  to  circumscribe  its  area  of  interest  and 
limit  its  range  of  expression.  .  It  is  a  sacrifice  to 
formalism  that  is  at  once  needless  and  useless.  "  The 
bust  outlasts  the  throne,  the  coin  Tiberius,"  but  the 
subject  of  the  novel  being  rather  Tiberius  and  the 
throne  than  busts  and  coins,  it  is  not  modelling  and 
chasing  as  such  and  for  their  own  sweet  sake  that 
endue  it  with  enduring  vitality,  but  qualities  more 
significant  and  more  profound.  And  these  qualities 
depend  upon  the  artist's  personality  and  are  insep- 
arable from  it.  They  are  essentially  human  in  dis- 
tinction from  purely  intellectual  or  sensuous  qualities. 
They  are  qualities  without  which  purely  intellectual 
or  sensuous  qualities  produce  a  result  that  is  often 
sterile  and  always  incomplete.  Wherein  lies  the 
superiority  of  "  Don  Quixote  "  to  "  Le  Capitaine  Fra- 
casse,"  that  interesting,  ingenious,  and  really  imagina- 
tive masterpiece  of  Grautier,  the  devotee,  the  slave, 
indeed,  of  art,  and  the  author  of  the  phrase  about  the 
permanence  of  the  bust  and  coin  just  now  cited  in 
Mr.  Dobson's  words  ?     In  its  human  quality  personally 

6 


THACKERAY 

expressed.  Is  "  Gil  Bias  "  truly  or  misleadingly  to  be 
caUed  a  more  "  artistic  "  performance  than  "  Don  Qui- 
xote "  because  there  is  so  much  Cervantes  in  the  latter 
and  no  Le  Sage  at  all  in  the  former  ?  Why  is  there 
such  a  sense  of  life  in  "The  Newcomes,"  compared 
with  Turgeniefifs  "Virgin  Soil,"  that  the  story  of  the 
latter  seems  by  comparison  to  vibrate  idly  in  vaaw  ? 
Because  Thackeray  enwraps  and  embroiders  his  story 
with  his  personal  philosophy,  charges  it  with  his 
personal  feeling,  draws  out,  with  inexhaustible  per- 
sonal zest,  its  typical  suggestiveness,  and  deals  with 
his  material  directly  instead  of  dispassionately  and 
disinterestedly,  after  the  manner  of  the  Eussian 
master.  Can  the  reader  do  all  this  for  himself?  If 
he  can,  and  can  do  it  as  well  as  Thackeray  does  it  for 
him,  he  may  consider  it  surplusage,  as  he  may  con- 
sider surplusage  the  Cervantes  in  "  Don  Quixote " ; 
otherwise,  in  wishing  it  away  he  must  reflect  that 
"  art "  is  an  exacting  mistress.  ^ 

The  question  is,  after  all,  mainly  one  of  technic. 
When  Thackeray  is  reproached  with  "bad  art"  for 
intruding  upon  his  scene,  the  reproach  is  chiefly  the 
recommendation  of  a  different  technic.  And  each 
man's  technic  is  his  own^  and  that  of  a  master  may 
be  accepted  as  possessing  some  inner  principle  of  pro- 
priety which  any  suggested  improvement  would  com- 
promise. But  it  may  also  be  said  that  for  the  novel 
on  a  large  scale,  the  novel  as  Thackeray  understood 
and  produced  it,  Thackeray's  technic  has  certain  clear 

7 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

advantages.  In  order  to  deal  with  life  powerfully, 
persuasively,  and  successfully,  the  direct  method  is  in 
some  respects  superior  to  the  detached.  It  is  a  com- 
monplace in  painting  that  the  scale  of  subject  and  the 
kind  of  efifect  sought  legitimately  dictate  technic ;  and 
the  contention,  once  common  among  academic  painters, 
for  the  same  treatment  of  subordinate  spaces  and  ob- 
jects as  that  given  to  the  salient  ones,  to  the  end  that 
you  might  enjoy  the  result  one  way  in  the  mass  and 
then  another  way  in  the  detail,  has  perhaps  ceased  to 
be  widely  held.  A  miniature  demands  a  unified  treat- 
ment, whereas  even  the  intrusive  "  Doge  Praying  "  of  a 
Venetian  canvas  is  not  too  great  a  strain  on  the  im- 
aginative appreciation  of  the  beholder.  And,  similarly, 
the  famous  "  short  story,"  the  writing  of  which  has  be- 
come "  a  finer  art "  since  the  day  of  "  The  Kickleburys 
on  the  Ehine,"  demands  a  treatment  appropriate  to  its 
episodic  or  microcosmic  character  which  the  novel  does 
not.  And  among  its  requisites  is,  very  likely,  —  be- 
yond all  question,  when  one  considers  the  personal 
force  of  most  practitioners  of  the  art, —  the  attitude  of 
reserve  and  detachment  in  the  writer.  But  Thackeray 
wrote  novels.  He  was  not  one  of  the  "  Little  Masters." 
He  could  do  Dutch  painting  with  the  most  adept  of  the 
cherry-stone  carvers,  on  occasion,  but  he  never  lost  sight 
of  relations  and  atmosphere,  and  for  these  —  in  which 
the  sense  of  reality  resides  —  a  freer  technic  is  salutary. 
Now  the  one  reason  for  insisting  on  "  objectivity " 
in  art  is  that  it  is  often  the  condition  of  illusion  —  the 

8 


THACKERAY 

illusion  of  reality  in  virtue  of  which  art  is  art  and  not 
itself  reahty,  the  mere  material  of  art.  If  Thackeray's 
"  subjectivity  "  destroyed  illusion  it  would  indeed  be  in- 
artistic. The  notable  thing  about  it  is  that  it  deepens 
illusion.  The  reality  of  his  "happy,  harmless  fable- 
land  "  is  wonderfully  enhanced  by  the  atmosphere  with 
which  his  moralizing  enfolds  it,  and  at  the  same  time 
the  magic  quality  of  this  medium  itself  enforces  our 
sense  that  it  is  fable-land,  and  enables  us  to  savor  as 
illusion  the  illusion  of  its  art.  Nothing  could  estabhsh 
the  edifice  of  his  imaginative  fiction  on  so  sound  a 
basis  as  those  confidences  with  the  reader  —  subtly 
inspired  by  his  governing  passion  for  truth  —  in  which 
he  is  constantly  protesting  that  it  is  fiction  after  all. 
The  artistic  service  of  this  element  of  his  fiction  is 
aptly  indicated  by  such  a  contrast  as  that  furnished 
by  Maupassant  —  a  master  of  objective  technic  if  there 
ever  was  one.  When  Maupassant  exchanges  the  short 
ftory,  in  which  his  touch  and  his  attainment  are  per- 
fection, for  a  larger  canvas  his  atmosphere  evaporates. 
Mr.  James  says  of  "  Une  Vie  "  that  if  its  subject  had 
been  the  existence  of  an  English  lady,  "  the  air  of  veri- 
similitude would  have  demanded  that  she  should  have 
been  placed  in  a  denser  medium."  He  would  have  her 
surrounded  with  more  figures,  with  more  of  the 
"miscellaneous  remplissage  of  life."  The  suggestion 
is  that  of  the  practitioner,  and  in  harmony  with 
Mr.  James's  impersonal  practice ;  and,  aside  from  the 
point  about  the  nationality  of  the  heroine,  which  is 

9 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

not  very  apposite,  it  is  very  just,  Mr.  James  would 
have  successfully  condensed  the  medium  by  the  "  mis- 
cellaneous remplissage  of  life."  But  there  is  also  the 
short  cut  to  verisimilitude  of  a  technic  with  more  color, 
more  personal  feeling  —  the  technic  that  provides  a 
medium  of  sensible  density  by  attuning  the  reader  to 
the  rhythm  of  the  subject,  and  establishes  between  them 
a  mutuality  of  relationship,  the  technic  of  Thackeray. 

And  it  is  to  be  observed  that  this  atmosphere, 
which  exists  to  such  serviceable  artistic  ends  in  Thack- 
eray's fiction,  exists  invariably  as  atmosphere.  It  ac- 
centuates the  impression  of  verisimilitude,  and  consti- 
tutes in  itself  an  element  of  magical  artistic  charm ; 
but  it  is  not  used  constructively  in  either  character  or 
composition.  The  reticulation  of  personal  comment 
that  rests  so  lightly  and  decoratively  on  the  fabric  of 
his  story,  all  the  imaginative  connotation,  so  to  say, 
philosophical  and  sentimental,  of  his  novels,  has  but  an 
auxiliary  function  and  plays  no  structural  part.  It  is 
not  used  to  fill  out  the  substance  and  round  the  out- 
lines of  his  personages,  who  exist  quite  independently 
of  it.  It  serves,  on  the  contrary,  to  detach  them  from 
the  background,  to  detach  them  from  their  creator  him- 
self. It  is  absolutely  true  that  Thackeray's  "  subjec- 
tivity "  in  this  way  subtly  increases  the  objectivity  of 
his  creations.  They  are  in  this  way  definitely  "ex- 
teriorized." In  this  way  we  get  the  most  vi\dd,  the 
most  realizing  sense  of  them  as  independent  existences ; 
and  in  this  way  we  get  Thackeray  too. 

10 


THACKERAY 

In  the  well-known  preface  to  his  "  Pierre  et  Jean," 
Maupassant  maintains  that  only  by  carefully  preserv- 
ing the  objective  attitude  can  a  novelist  avoid  putting 
himself  into  his  characters.  Mr.  James,  analyzing  this 
production  with  all  the  acuteness  of  the  analyst  who  is 
also  a  craftsman,  asserts  that  to  avoid  putting  himself 
into  his  characters  is  "the  difficulty  of  the  novelist" 
in  general,  whether  he  pursues  the  impersonal  manner 
or  not,  and  maintains  that  the  impersonal  manner  has 
notably  failed  to  remove  this  difficulty  for  Maupassant 
himself.  And  he  insists,  as  from  his  works  one  would 
expect  him  to  insist,  that  the  difficulty  "  only  increases 
the  beauty  of  the  problem."  Now,  speaking  as  one 
must  entirely  for  one's  self,  I  confess  that  I  for  one 
have  never  felt  in  reading  any  of  his  books  that  this 
"difficulty  of  the  novelist"  existed  for  Thackeray  at 
all.  It  was  not  an  obstacle  he  had  to  circumvent. 
Whether  we  agree  with  Maupassant  that  in  general  it 
can  best  be  circumvented  by  the  impersonal  attitude, 
or  with  Mr.  James  that  there  is  no  rehance  to  be 
placed  upon  any  mere  attitude,  we  may  at  least  note 
that  in  the  work  of  novelists  of  indisputably  the  first 
rank  this  difficulty  does  not  have  to  be  circumvented, 
since  for  them  it  does  not  exist.  It  exists  for  novelists 
impressed  by  " the  beauty  of  the  problem.'  Criticism 
is  certainly  legitimately  occupied  with  discovering  the 
laws  of  artistic  production,  and  to  these  laws  certainly 
the  production  of  the  greatest  artists,  as  well  as  that  of 
the  least,  is  legitimately  subject.      But  if  these  laws 

11 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

are  only  approximately  to  be  arrived  at  by  formulat- 
ing the  practice  of  the  masters,  since  the  ideal  in  any 
art  is  only  indicated  and  never  perfectly  illustrated  in 
practice,  they  are  surely  not  to  be  rigidly  induced  from 
the  expedients  of  others  in  surmounting  the  difficulties 
of  their  "problems."  And  whether  the  novel  be,  as 
Mr.  James  and  M.  Bourget  agree  in  calling  it,  the  ex- 
pression of  "  a  personal  view  of  life,"  or,  as  Taine  and 
Maupassant  maintain,  a  colorless  view,  the  question  as 
to  the  art  of  any  particular  novel  will  always  be.  How 
successful  is  it  in  giving  us  the  illusion  of  the  life  it 
purports  to  portray  ? 

Thackeray's  characters  were  so  little  reflections  of 
himself,  they  were  so  real  to  him,  that,  as  he  says  in 
"  De  Finibus,"  "  I  know  the  sound  of  their  voices."  And 
it  is  to  his  sense  of  their  reality  that  his  constant  talk 
of  them  is  in  no  small  degree  to  be  ascribed.  It  is  to 
the  same  sense  on  the  reader's  part  that  is  to  be  at- 
tributed no  small  part  of  the  reader's  enjoyment  in  this 
talk.  All  this  commentary  and  discursiveness,  this 
arguing  from  Philip  or  Amelia  to  men  and  women  in 
j  general,  this  moralizing  over  their  traits  and  conduct, 
^  has  the  zest  for  us  that  similar  criticism  and  gossip 
about  real  people,  if  any  such  were  attainable,  would 
possess.  If  it  displeases  any  reader  whose  sense  for 
"  art "  is  keener  than  his  interest  in  life,  there  is  per- 
haps no  more  to  be  said  —  except  that  a  sense  of  humor 
is  a  good  thing,  too,  and  not  inapposite  in  any  consider- 
ation of  one  of  the  greatest  of  humorists.     But  any  one 

12 


THACKERAY 

but  a  pedant  more  interested  in  the  rules  than  in  the 
result  of  novel- writing  can  see  that  this  familiar  com- 
mentary not  only  attests  but  greatly  enhances  the  sense 
of  reality,  of  life,  in  the  characters  that  furnish  its  text. 
Even  technically  considered,  it  is  in  this  respect  the 
acme  of  art.  In  Thackeray's  hands  it  does  not  distract 
the  attention,  but  concentrates  it  upon  the  representa- 
tive, the  typical,  the  vital  traits  of  his  personages. 
Taine  himself  having  occasion  to  censure  what  he 
deems  Thackeray's  cruel  irony  in  his  treatment  of 
Eebecca,  and  oppose  to  it  Balzac's  attitude  toward 
Valerie  Marneffe,  explains  the  superiority  of  the  latter 
by  the  assertion  that  "Balzac  loves  his  Valerie."  To 
his  assertion  that  the  great  artists  always  exhibit  his 
lauded  impartial  detachment,  a  critic  far  less  the  slave 
of  his  abstract  inductions,  Matthew  Arnold,  replies  that 
the  burden  of  all  the  great  works  of  literature,  from 
the  "  Agamemnon  "  down,  is  a  desire  that  the  good  may 
prevail.  I  am  not  sure  how  far  his  love  for  Madame 
Marneffe  may  count  in  Balzac's  favor,  but  certainly  his 
general  attitude  of  purely  scientific  though  inexhausti- 
ble curiosity  is  responsible  for  much  of  the  incurable 
artificiality  that  impairs  his  art.  His  figures  are  always 
definite,  but  real  as  they  are,  they  are  not  always  alive. 
It  is  the  touch  of  personal  feeling  that  communicates 
the  Promethean  spark. 

The  peril  of  possessing  a  gift  like  this  is  the  dis- 
position to  exercise  it  in  excess.  When  personal  ex- 
pression is  so  easy,  so  admirable,  and  so  successful  as 

13 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

Thackeray's,  when,  as  with  him,  it  is  a  faculty  clearly 
to  be  exercised  instead  of  repressed,  the  temptation  to 
rely  upon  it,  to  overwork  it,  to  give  it  a  free  rein,  is 
very  great.  Even  in  the  unique  "  Roundabout  Papers," 
whicli  are  its  expression  par  excellence,  there  are  in- 
stances of  this  excess.  "  Philip  "  is  a  notable  instance. 
Thackerayans  read  "  Philip  "  —  or  even  "  Lovel  the  Wid- 
ower"— without  finding  a  dull  page  in  it,  just  as 
Wordsworthians  read  "  Vaudracour  and  Julia,"  and  the 
whole  series  of  the  "  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,"  partly,  no 
doubt,  out  of  mere  momentum.  But  every  one  cannot 
be  a  Thackerayan,  and  for  others  the  interest  of 
"  Philip  "  now  and  then  flags,  probably.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
tour  de  force  in  prolixity.  The  proportion  of  Thackeray 
to  Philip  is  prodigious.  The  story  is  decidedly  thin; 
there  is  next  to  no  plot,  and  the  incidents  are  few  and 
of  the  same  family.  The  first  hundred  pages  are  as- 
tonishing variations  on  the  single  theme  of  Philip's  an- 
tagonism to  his  father.  A  great  deal  of  the  book  is 
pure  "copy."  Even  the  color  is  borrowed  here  and 
there  from  its  predecessors,  as  where  the  Little  Sister 
"  admires "  Philip  for  knocking  down  the  Reverend 
Tufton  Hunt,  though  not  of  course  in  the  same  way 
that  Rebecca  does  her  husband,  "  standing  there,  strong, 
brave,  victorious,"  after  similar  treatment  of  Lord 
Steyne,  and  where  Dr.  Firmin's  picture  of  "  Abraham 
Offering  up  Isaac "  performs  the  service  of  the  Jacob- 
and-Esau  tile  in  the  fireplace  at  Castlewood.  How 
many  letters  are  there  from  Dr.  Firmin  in  America ; 

14 


THACKERAY 

how  many  glimpses  of  the  Pendemiis  interior  with 
Laura  and  the  children  engaged  in  "  osculation  "  ;  how 
many  times  does  Philip  get  into  the  same  quarrel  with 
different  people!  The  characters  save  the  story  from 
mediocrity  —  and  triumphantly.  They  are  drawn  with 
the  true  Thackerayan  firmness  and  distinction.  Where, 
indeed,  is  there  a  weak  line  in  any  portrait  of  his  popu- 
lous gallery  ?  But  they  have  not  quite  the  relief  of 
their  fellows,  and  the  book  would  have  been  far  less 
important  than  it  is,  distinctly  a  minor  production,  but 
for  the  preachment  that  occupies  so  disproportionate  a 
space,  and,  moreover,  is  of  inferior  quahty  to  that  of 
the  great  novels,  of  "Vanity  Fair"  and  "The  New- 
comes."  And  yet  excessive  as  it  is  and  fringing  per- 
functoriness  as  it  does,  it  shows  itself  in  this  crucial 
instance  of  "  Philip  "  —  where  it  is  not  only  abused, 
but  treated  too  Hghtly  —  essentially  not  a  defect  but  a 
quality  of  Thackeray's  equipment. 

Ill 

Thackera.y's  practice  is  not  perhaps  to  be  recom- 
mended, and  critics  who  have  the  art  of  fiction  at  heart 
cannot  do  better  than  to  insist  on  the  value  of  the 
detached  attitude  in  the  author.  But  any  view  of 
Thackeray  is  an  imperfect  one  which  does  not  perceive 
that  he  is  a  notable  exception  to  the  rule  wisely  enough 
prescribing  this  attitude  iu  general  His  personal  force 
and  charm  take  him  quite  outside   of   its  operation. 

15 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

The  perfection  with  wliich  the  artist  and  the  satirist  are 
united  —  or  rather  fused  —  in  him  almost  entitles  his 
novels  to  classification  as  a  different  genre.  At  least, 
in  order  to  consider  them  profitably  it  is  necessary  to 
take  into  account  in  far  greater  degree  than  in  other 
instances  the  man  himself  as  well  as  his  works.  A 
correct  synthesis  is  reached  most  directly  in  his  case 
by  regarding  his  works  mainly  as  manifestations  of  the 
genius  that  unifies  them.  Even  critics  who  think  it 
bad  art  for  an  author  to  obtrude  his  personality  must 
admit  that  the  evil  is  lessened  in  proportion  to  the  in- 
terest of  the  personality  so  obtruded.  As  to  the  interest 
of  Thackeray's,  there  is  likely  to  be  no  contention.  It 
is  one  of  the  most  marked  in  letters.  When  one  con- 
siders his  personal  force,  the  notion  of  confining  its 
direct  expression  to  pure  dissertation  appears  grotesque. 
To  the  true  Thackerayan,  of  course  —  like  Dr.  John 
Brown,  Mr.  Herman  Merivale,  or  Mr.  William  B.  Reed 

—  no  price  is  too  great  to  pay  for  any  of  its  manifesta- 
tions. It  has  as  much  charm  as  power,  and  is  infinitely 
gracious  and  winning.  It  provides  an  atmosphere  of  its 
own  in  which  his  characters  live  and  move,  and  to 
which  they  owe  no  small  portion  of  their  attractiveness 

—  in  virtue  of  which,  indeed,  they  constitute  an  organic 
community  by  themselves.  If  he  is  their  "  showman," 
he  certainly  shows  them  off  to  advantage,  and  he  him- 
self is  not  the  least  interesting  figure  of  the  show. 
The  spectacle  gains  immensely  from  his  association 
with  the  company.    How  he  thinks  and  feels  in  the 

16 


THACKERAY 

presence  of  the  drama  they  are  enacting  immensely  ex- 
tends the  range  of  our  interest.  Conceive  "  The  New- 
comes"  without  the  presence  of  Thackeray  upon  the 
stage  —  minus  the  view  it  gives  us  of  the  working  of 
its  author's  mind,  the  glimpses  of  his  philosophy,  the 
touches  of  his  feeling.  The  result  would  be  like  that 
of  eliminating  the  commentary  which  Colonel  Henry 
Esmond  interweaves  with  his  autobiography.  "Well, 
but  Esmond  is  one  of  the  characters  of  the  book,  and 
his  prosings  are  therefore  pertinent,  says  Taine.  So  is 
Arthur  Pendennis,  Esq.,  the  putative  author  of  "The 
Newcomes."  But  Pendennis  is  the  thinnest  of  whim- 
sical disguises  for  the  real  author,  and  the  half-hearted 
attempt  to  continue  him  and  Laura  as  characters  is 
purely  playful  True,  they  are  needless  sops  to  the 
critical  Cerberus,  and,  aside  from  adding  pleasantly  to 
the  machinery  of  the  story,  they  really  serve  to  show 
how  legitimately  the  reader  who  is  not  a  pedant  may 
enjoy  the  personality  of  Thackeray  apart  from  as  well 
as  with  any  artistic  expedients  of  the  sort. 

In  a  more  definite  and  apposite  way,  therefore,  than 
is  true  of  a  personality  that  produces  works  of  a  more 
impersonal  order,  Thackeray's  own  nature  becomes  the 
most  interesting  and  important  subject  to  consider  in 
connection  with  his  works.  He  was  above  all  else  a 
lover  of  truth.  The  love  of  truth  was  with  him,  in- 
deed, less  a  sentiment  than  a  passion.  It  absorbed  his 
mind  and  inspired  its  activity.  To  the  moral  tempera- 
ment thus  attested  falsehood  of  all  kinds  seemed  the 

17 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

one  thing  in  the  universe  worth  the  evocation  of  mili- 
tant energy.  The  exposure  of  sham  enUsted  all  his 
artistic  faculty.  He  pursued  it  with  the  most  search- 
ing subtlety  ever  devoted  to  a  definite  artistic  aim  in 
all  his  books.  The  villain  of  all  his  stories  is  the 
hypocrite.  Some  of  them  —  "  Barry  Lyndon,"  "  The 
Tremendous  Adventures  of  Major  Gahagan,"  "The 
Book  of  Snobs  "  —  are  concerned  with  pretence  alone, 
the  pretence  that  eludes  the  detection  of  others  and 
tliat  which  deceives  the  pretender  himself.  "  The  Book 
of  Snobs "  is  an  amazing  series  of  variations  on  this 
single  theme  —  hardly  robust  enough  in  itself  to  have 
avoided  flatness  and  failure,  in  the  course  of  such  elabo- 
ration, by  a  wTiter  less  "  possessed "  by  it.  This  at 
least  is  what  saves  its  perennial  interest  for  other 
readers  than  those  familiar  with  the  particular  society  it 
satirizes,  for  other  than  English  readers,  that  is  to  say. 
"  You  must  not  judge  hastily  or  vulgarly  of  snobs ;  to 
do  so  shows  that  you  are  yourself  a  snob.  I  myself 
have  been  taken  for  one."  These  statements  are  for 
all  nationalities. 

It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  hypocrisy  consti- 
tutes one  of  the  most  effective  elements  which  the 
novelist  can  use  in  portraying  human  life  on  a  large 
scale  and  under  civilized  conditions.  Imposture  of  one 
kind  or  another  almost  monopolizes  the  seamy  side  of 
any  society's  existence.  In  the  material  of  the  novel- 
ist of  manners  it  has  the  same  place  as  crime  in  that 
of  the  romance  of  adventure.     It  is  the  natural  con- 

18 


THACKERAY 

comitant  of  gregariousness,  the  great  social  bane,  the 
social  incarnation  of  Ahriman,  the  shadow  if  not  also 
the  middle  tint  of  the  social  picture.  Almost  inevitably 
the  novelist,  who  both  by  predisposition  and  by  prac- 
tice handles  it  well,  presents  ft,  picture  of  sound  and 
vital  verisimilitude,  and  of  profounder  and  more  uni- 
versal significance  than  a  study  of  most  other  social 
forces  affords. 

Thackeray  was  extremely  sensitive,  and  his  suscep- 
tibility was  as  highly  organized  as  it  was  sensitive. 
He  was  quick  to  take  offence  when  his  sense  of  self- 
respect  was  touched,  and  he  was  nothing  less  than 
weakly  amiable.  His  quarrel  with  Dickens  over 
Yates's  "journalistic"  fatix  jpas  is  witness  of  both,  as 
their  reconciliation  is  of  his  incapability  of  cherishing 
rancor.  In  the  ocean  of  aria  that  since  his  death  has 
eddied  about  his  name  are  countless  instances  of  his 
goodness  of  heart,  the  prodigious  fund  of  kindness  in 
his  nature,  and  the  tact  of  its  dispensation.  All 
women  with  whom  he  came  in  contact  expanded  in 
the  atmosphere  of  his  chivalry — the  atmosphere,  say, 
of  the  Brookfield  Letters.  He  was  an  ideal  clubman. 
He  had  the  most  deeply  attached  friends.  His  fond- 
ness for  children  is  proverbial.  He  used  to  go  to  St. 
Paul's  on  Charity  Children's  day  to  hear  the  thousands 
of  young  voices  singing  in  unison,  with  the  result  and 
to  the  end  of  the  dimming  of  his  spectacles  and  the 
enjoyment  of  "happy  pity."  He  loved  to  tip  school- 
boys, to  frequent  Bohemia.     Artlessness  of  all  kinds 

19 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

had  a  special  attraction  for  him.  What  displeased 
hini  most  in  the  affectation  that  always  revolted  him, 
Wiis  its  element  of  calculation:  He  had  none  of  it 
himself.  Of  all  prose  writers  of  the  first  rank  he  is 
the  most  purely  instinctive.  His  high  spirits  are  as- 
tonishing^ They  are  the  source  of  the  infectiousness 
of  his  humor  as  well  as  responsible  for  its  occasional 
triviality.  And  their  undercurrent  is  a  melancholy 
that  is  as  native  as  they.  When  they  flag,  the 
lapse  is  not  into  dulness — there  is  more  dulness  in 
Voltaire ;  it  is  into  the  allied  minor  key,  which  is  pur- 
sued with  the  same  sincerity — one  is  tempted  to  add, 
with  the  same  zest.  Work  was  mainly  drudgery  to 
him,  in  spite  of  the  amount  of  it  which  he  performed 
and  the  persistency  with  which  he  labored.  He  was 
thoroughly  human  in  his  weaknesses  as  in  his  sympa- 
thies, and  the  sobriety  and  industry  with  which  he 
subdued  his  temperamental  tendencies  and,  by  control 
and  constraint,  oompelled  his  faculties  to  construct  the 
literary  monument  he  left,  fashioned  in  the  process  a 
character  that  is,  in  its  way,  also  a  monument  of  ele- 
vated eflbrt 

Such  a  nature  is  too  ample  to  be  distinctly  critical, 
and  Thackeray's  had  its  prejudices,  searching  as  was 
the  mind  tliat  governed  it.  His  body  of  doctrine  was 
traditional,  and  he  devoted  little  thought  to  what 
Carlyle  calls  "verifying  one's  ready-reckoner."  His 
genius  is  rather  that  of  the  born  novelist.  He  as- 
cribes Napoleon's  final  defeat  to  the  development  of 

20 


THACKERAY 

military  superiority  in  Wellington.  His  view  of  Louis 
XIV.  lacks  seriousness.  His  attitude  toward  things 
French,  in  general,  always  good-natured,  is  yet  funda- 
mentally British, — see  "  The  Second  Funeral  of  Napo- 
leon," "The  Paris  Sketch-Book," — intimately  as  Paris 
appealed  to  his  epicurean  side  and  sympathetically 
divined  and  described  as  his  French  characters  are. 
But  in  portraying  these  he  is  exercising  his  genius, 
which  is  never  at  fault.  And  it  appears  as  unmistak- 
ably in  his  essays,  his  burlesques,  his  sketches,  his 
literary  criticism,  as  in  his  novels  themselves.  No 
writer  whose  fame  rests,  as  Thackeray's  larger  fame 
does,  on  notable  works  of  fiction,  has  written  miscella- 
neous literature  of  such  distinction.  There  is  extraor- 
dinarily little  "  copy  "  in  it.  It  is  the  lighter  work  of 
a  man  born  for  greater  things,  and  having  therefore  in 
its  quality  something  superior  to  its  genre. 

On. the  other  hand,  the  "illustration,"  for  which  he 
seemed  to  think  he  had  a  native  bent  and  which  he 
curiously  persisted  in,  is  almost  unaccountable  con- 
sidered in  conjunction  with  any  of  his  other  accom- 
plishment, until  we  remember  how  little  art  was 
exacted  of  "illustrators"  by  the  England  of  his  day. 
Pictorial  art  was  clearly  not  his  vocation.  His  draw- 
ings have  plenty  of  character ;  and  it  is  not  unfortu- 
nate, perhaps,  that  we  have  his  pictorial  presentment 
rather  than  another's,  of  so  many  of  his  personages. 
But  he  not  only  lacked  the  skill  that  comes  of  train- 
ing— he  had  no  real  gift  for  representation,  and  for 

21 


VICTORIAN   PROSE   MASTERS 

the  plastic  expression  of  beauty  he  had  no  faculty; 
the  element  of  caricature  is  prominent  in  all  his  de- 
signs. He  did  them  with  great  delight  and  ease, 
whereas  literary  work  was  always  drudgery  to  him; 
but  of  course  this  is  the  converse  of  witness  to  their 
merit. 

His  poetry,  which  he  wrote  at  intervals,  and  desul- 
torily throughout  his  career,  is  on  a  decidedly  higher 
plane.  It  is  of  the  kind  that  is  accurately  called 
"  verses,"  but  it  is  as  plainly  his  own  as  his  prose ;  and 
some  of  it  will  always  be  read,  probably,  for  its  feeling 
and  its  felicity.  It  is  the  verse  mainly  but  not  merely 
of  the  improvisatore.  It  never  oversteps  the  modesty 
becoming  the  native  gift  that  expresses  itself  in  it. 
Most  of  it  could  not  have  been  as  well  said  in  prose ; 
and  its  title  is  clear  enough,  however  unpretentious. 
Metrically  and  in  substance  the  "  Ballads  "  are  excellent 
balladry.  They  never  rise  to  Scott's  level  of  heroic 
bravura,  and  though  the  contemplative  ones  are  deeper 
in  feeling  than  any  of  Scott's,  they  are  poetically  more 
summary  and  have  less  sweep ;  one  hardly  thinks  of 
the  pinions  of  song  at  all  in  connection  with  them. 
Prose  was  distinctly  Thackeray's  medium  more  exclu- 
sively than  it  was  Scott's.  But  compare  the  best  of 
the  "  Ballads  "  with  Macaulaj'^s  "  Lays,"  to  note  the  dif- 
ference in  both  quality  and  execution  between  the 
verse  of  a  %ATiter  with  a  clear  poetic  strain  in  his 
temperament,  and  the  "numbers"  of  a  pure  rhetori- 
cian.    "  The  White  Squall "  is  a  tour  de  force  of  rhyme 

22 


THACKERAY 

and  rhythm ;  the  "  Ballad  of  Bouillabaisse  "  has  a  place 
in  every  reader's  affections ;  "  Mr.  Moloney's  Account  of 
the  Ball"  is  a  perpetual  delight;  even  "The  Crystal 
Palace "  is  not  merely  clever ;  and  "  The  Pen  and  the 
Album  "  and  notably  the  "  Vanitas  Vanitatum  "  verses 
have  an  elevation  that  is  both  solemn  and  moving — 
a  sustained  note  of  genuine  lyric  inspiration  chanting 
gravely  the  burden  of  all  the  poet's  prose. 

Nowhere  is  the  special  quality  of  his  genius  more 
apparent  than  in  the  admirable  series  of  "  Lectures  on 
the  EngHsh  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century," 
which  is  literary  criticism  of  a  high  order,  but  dis- 
tinctly the  criticism  of  the  novelist  rather  than  of  the 
critic.  It  occupies,  for  this  reason,  a  place  by  itself. 
It  is  hardly  such  an  account  of  the  literature  of  the 
Augustan  age  as  Professor  Saintsbury  would  write. 
It  quite  neglects  the  element  of  literary  evolution,  is 
unconscious  of  the  historical  or  any  other  method,  does 
not  discuss  the  poetic  weakness  of  an  age  of  prose,  and 
is  not  based  on  minute  and  studious  textual  examina- 
tion of  its  subject  but  on  saturation  with  it.  Its  anno- 
tation had  to  be  left  to  Mr.  Hannay,  I  believe,  who 
performed  the  work  very  agreeably,  and  probably 
better  than  Thackeray  would  have  done.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  literary  criticism,  at  least  of  the 
scientific  Hterary  criticism  of  the  present  day,  the  work 
may  certainly  be  said  to  have  been  lightly  undertaken. 
The  lecture  on  Swift  ends:  "We  have  other  great 
names  to  mention  —  none  I  think,  however,  so  great 

23 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

or  so  gloomy."  The  coDsideration  of  Pope  begins: 
"  We  are  now  come  to  the  greatest  name  on  our  list." 
Stella  is  made  a  natural  daughter  of  Sir  William  Tem- 
ple on  the  authority  of  pure  divination.  The  literary 
importance  of  Steele  and  Goldsmith  is  exaggerated, 
and  that  of  Sterne  minimized  in  accordance  with  the 
personal  predilections  and  antipathy  of  the  critic. 
Addison  is  reproached  with  coldness,  not  with  com- 
monplace. One  would  hardly  suspect  that  "  Clarissa 
Harlowe"  was  a  classic  and  Richardson  a  notable 
artist,  as  well  as  a  sentimental  foil  for  "  the  manly, 
the  English  Harry  Fielding " ;  or  that  Hogarth  was 
an  admirable  painter  as  well  as  a  great  humorist.  The 
characters  of  the  writers  are  the  real  subject  of  the 
series,  which  is  an  unequalled  gallery  of  literary  por- 
traits. Each  one  is  all  there.  The  painter  may  have 
treated  the  detail  indifferently  here  and  there,  over- 
emphasized an  expression,  missed  the  full  value  of 
some  features,  but  they  stand  out  with  the  same  vivid 
distinctness  that  belongs  to  the  characters  of  his  fiction. 
He  has  visualized  them  in  the  same  way.  One  may  say 
the  same  thing  of  the  lectures  on  "  The  Four  Georges," 
who  although  in  the  pillory  in  his  pages,  owe  him  their 
fame.  He  was,  in  a  word,  by  temperament  and  faculty, 
first  and  last  a  novelist. 

IV 

Foe  this  reason  his  world  is  an  extremely  concrete 
world.    His  people  are  the  people  we  meet  or  might 

24 


/v. 


THACKERAY    '  /i/>^ 


meet;  his  characters  are  types,  not  variants  and  ex- 
ceptions, and,  accordingly,  they  have  a  human  and 
social  rather  than  a  psychological  interest.  Thus,  M. 
Scherer  distinguishes  him  as  a  novelist  of  manners, 
contrasted  with  George  EKot,  a  novelist  of  character. ; 
The  distinction,  at  any  rate,  needs  this  explanation, 
for  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  characters  of  Thackeray 
which  illustrate  manners  are  lacking  in  individual  in- 
terest. But  they  are  delineated,  xather  than  dissected ; 
they  are  not  explored  clinically.  They  are  not  studied 
and  scrutinized  in  the  spirit  of  the  scientist  or  the 
philosopher.  And  the  diJBference  is  deeper  than  mere 
manner  of  artistic  presentation.  Tito  Melema  has 
something  the  interest  of  Faust  or  Mephistopheles. 
You  seek  their  counterparts  in  your  own  mind. 
"Goethe  found,"  says  Emerson,  "that  the  essence  of 
this  hobgobhn  which  had  hovered  in  the  shadow  ever 
since  there  were  men  was  pure  intellect,  applied — as 
always  there  is  a  tendency — to  the  service  of  the 
senses,"  and,  accordingly,  "flung"  Mephistopheles 
"into  literature."  Similarly,  George  Ehot  incarnates 
in  Tito  the  abstraction  of  the  spirit  that  shrinks  from 
what  is^  unpleasant.  The  reader's  introspection  assures 
him  of  his  own  tragic  potentialities  in  this  regard,  and, 
seen  through  his  own  imagination,  Tito  becomes  vividly 
real  to  him.  The  interest  of  Thackeray's  Eebecca  is 
of  quite  another  kind.  Sh^is  a  type,  a  representative 
of  a  clasSji^noted,  fixed,  observeHTahd  describeHj^as~far 
as  possible  removed,  in  genesis,  from  the  abstract. 
^^Z' 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

You  know  that  Tito  is  going  to  act  in  direct  illustra- 
tion of  the  principle  that  he  almost  personifies.  You 
don't  know  at  all  what  Rebfi.cca..is  going  to  do  next. 
Thackeray  professed  ignorance  of  what  she  really  did, 
of  how  far  she  really  went.  She  has  the  reality  of 
Maggie  Tulliver — a  truly  Thackerayan  character,  and 
one  of  the  few  in  George  Eliot  that  do  not  acquire 
their  reality  through  an  appeal  to  the  imagination. 
Her  psychology  is  simple  enough ;  so  is  the  morally 
complicated  Beatrix  Esmond's.  The  philosophy  they 
illustrate  is  not  obscure,  and  they  give  rise  to  very  little 
speculation. 

The  caric^re  that  a  character  of  Dickens  is  apt  to 
be  proceeds  from  its  being  a  characteristic  in  action. 
A  character  of  George  Eliot  is  formed  of  many  char- 
acteristics, fused  with  remarkable  and  sympathetic 
insight,  but  after  all  it  is  essentially  a  product  of  induc- 
tion. Compare  one  of  the  happiest  results  of  this  pro- 
cedure, the  banker  Bulstrode  in  "  Middlemarch,"  with, 
say,  Dr.  Firmin,  greatly  Bulstrode's  inferior  in  com- 
plexity, in  intellectual  interest.  One  is  flesh  and  blood, 
the  other  attracts  you  because  of  the  striking  way  in 
which  moral  self-sophistication  is  embodied.  Notliing 
better  attests  George  Eliot's  scientific  interest  in  char- 
acter than  her  constant  exhibition  of  its  evolution. 
This  is  one  of  her  real  contributions  to  literature.  The 
effect  of  circumstances  in  developing  a  character  hke 
Lydgate,  for  example,  the  difference  between  Eosamond 
as   she  is  first  introduced  and  when  she  leaves  the 

26 


THACKERAY 

stage,  are  almost  Spencerian  demonstrations.  This,  as 
Mr.  Albert  Dicey,  I  think,  has  observed,  was  an  un- 
known thing  in  fiction  when  George  Eliot  began  to 
write,  and  it  is  naturally  savored  by  the  palate  of  our 
day,  which  seeks  a  taste  of  science  even  in  its  literary 
confections.  But  it  is  needless  to  point  out  that  it  im- 
plies an  instinct  quite  lacking  in  Thackeray,  in  whose 
view  character  is  spectacle,  significant  spectacle,  to  be 
sure,  and  its  significance  often  copiously  insisted  upon,  / 
but  essentially  spectacle,  and  not  the  illustrative  incar- 
nation of  interesting  traits  and  tendencies.  This  is 
also  Shakespeare's  view,  it  may  be  added,  as  it  is 
clearly  the  distinctly  literary  view  as  opposed  to  the 
scientific. 

The  initial  procedure  of  the  human  mind,  however,  is 
in  a  priori  order,  and  the  artist,  like  every  one  else,  be- 
gins with  ideas.  We  are  taught  at  school  that  there 
can  be  no  evolution  without  a  previous  involution. 
The  idea  underlying  the  world  Thackeray  constructed 
is  the  intricate  moral  complexity  of  character — an  idea 
illustrated  with  a  completeness  and  relief  not  perhaps 
to  be  met  with  elsewhere  outside  of  Shakespeare  and 
Moliere.  The  personages  of  fiction  before  his  time,  at 
all  events,  are  morally  pretty  much  .all  of  a  piece.  It 
is  apt  to  be  either  Jones  or  Blifil  with  most  writers, 
eminently  so  in  the  case  of  the  Romanticists,  of  course. 
Thackeray's  absorption  in  the  moral  interest  of  char- 
acter is,  on  the  other  hand,  naturally  limiting.  It  ex- 
cludes, or  relegates  to  the  background,  that  fourth  part 

27 


^  VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

i      of  life   which   remains   after  assigning,  according   to 
***y     Arnold's  formula,  three  fourths  to  conduct.     Of   this 
^     fourth,  other  writers — Shakespeare  and  Moli^re  among 
y     them — make  a  good  deal,  it  need  not  be  said.     And  of 
"Tourse  iifls^schewing  it — in  confining  himself  in  the 
main  to  character  not  merely  in  its  elemental  traits, 
but  in  its  morally  significant  ones  as  well — a  realist 
like  Thackeray  renounces  a  field  so  large  and  inter- 
esting as  justly  to  have  his  neglect  of  it  accounted  to 
him  as  a  limitation.     The  colorless  characters,  such  as 
Tom  Tulliver  for  a  single  example,  in  which  George 
Eliot  is    so   strong,  the    irresponsible    ones,  such   as 
Dickens's  Jingles  and  Swivellers,  have  few  fellows  in 
his  fiction,  from  which  the  seriousness  of  his  satiric 
strain  excludes  whatever  is  not  significant  as  well  as 
whatever  is  purely  particular.     The  loss  is  very  great, 
considering  his  world  as  a   commie  humaine.     It  in- 
volves more  than  the  elimination  of  psychology — it 
diminishes  the  number  of  types ;  and  all  tj'pes  are  inter- 
esting, whether  morally  important  or  not. 

But  in  Thackeray's  case  it  has  two  great  compensa- 
tions. In  the  first  place,  the  greater  concentration  it 
involves  notably  defines  and  emphasizes  the  net  impres- 
sion of  his  works.  It  unifies  their  effect ;  and  sharply 
crystallizes  the  message  to  mankind,  which,  like  every 
great  writer,  whatever  branch  of  literature  he  may  cul- 
tivate, it  was  the  main  business,  the  aim  and  crown 
and  apology  of  his  life  to  deliver.  In  the  second  place, 
it  is  his  concentration   upon  the  morally  significant 

28 


THACKERAY 

that  places  him  at  the  head  of  the  novelists  of  man- 
ners. It  is  the  moral  and  social  qualities,  of  course, 
that  unite  men  in  society,  and  make  it  something  other 
than  the  sum  of  the  individuals  composing  it.  Thack- 
eray's personages  are  never  portrayed  in  isolation. 
They  are  a  part  of  the  milieu  in  which  they  exist,  and 
which  has  itself  therefore  much  more  distinction  and 
relief  than  an  environment  which  is  merely  a  frame- 
work. How  they  regard  each  other,  how  they  feel 
toward  and  what  they  think  of  each  other,  the  mutual- 
ity of  their  very  numerous  and  vital  relations,  fur- 
nishes an  important  strand  in  the  texture  of  the  story 
in  which  they  figure.  Their  activities  are  modified  by 
the  air  they  breathe  in  common.  Their  conduct  is  con- 
trolled, their  ideas  affected,  even  their  desires  and 
ambitions  dictated,  by  the  general  ideals  of  the  society 
that  includes  them.  So  far  as  it  goes,  therefore, — and 
it  would  be  easy  to  exaggerate  its  limitations,  which  are 
trivial  in  comparison, — Thackeray's  picture  of  society 
is  the  most  vivid,  as  it  is  incontestably  the  most  real, 
in  prose  fiction.  The  temperament  of  the  artist  and 
satirist  combined,  the  preoccupation  with  the  moral 
element  in  character, — and  in  logical  sequence,  with  its 
human  and  social  side, — lead  naturally  to  the  next 
step  of  viewing  man  in  his  relations,  and  the  construc- 
tion of  a  miniature  world.  And  in  addition  to  the 
high  place  in  literature  won  for  him  by  his  insight  into 
character,  Thackeray's  social  picture  has  given  him  a 
distinction  that  is  perhaps  unique. 

29 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

Furthermore,  compared  with  the  moral  interest  of 
character,  that  of  its  purely  psychological  peculiarities 
is  distinctly  less  vital  and  permanent.  The  interest, 
for  instance,  of  Micawber  or  MantaUni  is  mferior  to 
and  more  transitory  than  that  of  Captain  Costigan. 
Character,  indeed,  means  moral  character.  As  Stendhal 
puts  it :  "  Moli^re  painted  with  more  depth  tlian  the 
other  poets ;  therefore  he  is  more  moral."  And  I  have 
never  heard  it  suggested  that  Thackeray's  personages, 
morally  considered  as  they  are,  lacked  psychological 
definition  —  any  more  than  those  of  George  Eliot,  who 
has  the  converse  preoccupation,  lack  moral  significance. 
The  moral  element  in  their  portrayal  adds  reality  and 
reUef,  as  well  as  importance.  Its  complexity,  at  any 
rate,  is  Thackeray's  theme,  and  he,  at  least,  found  it  in- 
exhaustible. With  him  no  passion  is  simple,  no  motive 
unmixed.  Affection  is  alloyed  with  injustice,  innocence 
with  selfishness,  generosity  with  folly,  love  itself  with 
hallucination,  jealousy,  and  calculation. 

Nowhere  is  this  to  be  so  plainly  noted  as  in  his 
women,  because  women,  being  less  highly  differentiated 
than  men,  exhibit  more  clearly  their  native  and  ele- 
mental inconsistencies.  They  are  the  constant  quantity 
in  the  human  equation.  No  one  ever  heard  of  the  ewig 
mdnnliches.  Instances  crowd  the  memory.  Thackeray 
triumphs  with  equal  distinction  in  the  analysis  that  dis- 
covers the  sound  alloy  in  base  metal  and  in  that  which 
finds  dross  in  the  most  refined.  Eachel  Castlewood 
and  her  brilliant  daughter,  Ethel  Newcome  and  Ee- 

30 


THACKERAY 

becca,  are  equally  complicated.  Amelia  is  elaborately 
structural  compared  with  her  namesake  and  prototype 
in  Fielding,  and  any  one  who  mistakes  her  for  a  simple 
character  has  missed  "  Vanity  Fair."  But  Beatrix  is 
probably  her  creator's  masterpiece.  She  is  on  a  larger 
scale  than  Eebecca,  and  she  is  not  only  more  splendid, 
but  even  less  fixed  and  absolute.  Eebecca  might  have 
been  virtuous,  as  she  said,  on  five  thousand  a  year,  but 
Beatrix  had  infinite  possibilities  and  at  any  moment 
might  have  realized  them.  It  is  largely  due  to  her 
that  "  The  Virginians,"  fine  as  it  is  in  wealth  of  inci- 
dent and  variety  of  character,  ranks  with  the  great 
novels  rather  than  with  "  Philip,"  or  even  with  what 
we  can  di\dne  "  Denis  Duval "  would  have  proved  had 
Thackeray  lived  to  complete  it. 

"  Esmond  "  is  not  the  greatest  of  the  novels ;  it  is  the 
most  perfect.  Thackeray  was  quite  right  in  calling  it 
"  the  very  best  that  I  can  do,"  and  speaking  of  leaving 
it  behind  him  as  his  card.  A  writer  judges  of  his  own 
work  preferably  as  an  artist,  and  as  an  artist  his  aim  is 
to  please  and  his  effort  is  for  flawlessness.  Both  in 
conception  and  in  workmanship,  "  Esmond  "  is  well-nigh 
flawless.  Mr.  Lowell  found  a  modern  locution  in  it,  I 
believe,  and  Trollope  accepted,  rather  priggishly,  Thack- 
eray's assertion  that  Esmond  himself  was  a  bit  of  a 
prig.  But  it  has  fewer  flaws  probably  than  any  work 
of  either  its  kind  or  its  scale  ever  written.  It  is  as  a 
novel  what  the  "  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  "  is  as  a  poem. 
The  archaism  of  its  style  is  far  more  than,  quite  other 

31 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

than,  a  literary  feat.  It  is  a  sustained  and  complete 
illusion,  an  envelope  of  atmosphere  in  which  the  story 
rests  exquisitely  transfigured.  The  plot  is  always 
praised  for  its  perfection ;  the  story  is  developed  with 
harmonious  and  tranquil  art ;  the  element  of  beauty  is 
everywhere  prominent  in  it.  It  contains  some  of 
Thackeray's  rarest  writing — in  passages  like  that  re- 
lating Esmond's  visit  to  the  convent  cemetery  at  Brus- 
sels, in  the  entire  chapter  called  "  The  29th  December." 
The  beauty  of  Beatrix  is  the  mainspring  of  the  book's 
action ;  that  of  her  mater  pulchra  is  a  softened  and 
spiritualized  parallel.  The  very  fragrance  of  romance 
perfumes  the  air  at  Castlewood ;  the  tone  of  quiet,  of 
refinement,  of  elevation  is  so  perfectly  preserved  that 
one  of  Philip  Firmin's  laughs,  one  of  old  Major  Penden- 
nis's  worldly  harangues,  the  sound  of  Lady  Kew's  voice, 
would  be  a  jar.  It  is  Thackeray's  artistic — perhaps 
one  may  rather  say  liis  poetic — masterpiece.  But  if  it 
were  his  only  work,  or  its  vein  his  only  vein,  Thackeray 
would  mean  far  less  to  us  than  he  does.  There  are 
devotees  of  art  who  prefer  "  The  BHthedale  Eomance  " 
to  "  The  Scarlet  Letter,"  but  their  view  is  an  esoteric 
view,  and  as  Hawthorne's  fame  does  "not  rest  mainly  on 
his  most  artistic  performance,  so  Thackeray's  is  as 
firmly  established  on  the  other  three  members  of  "  the 
great  quadrilateral "  (as,  with  "  Esmond,"  "  Vanity 
Fair,"  "  Pendennis,"  and  "  The  Newcomes  "  have  been 
called)  as  on  "  Esmond  "  itself.  Life  is  a  larger  thing 
than  art,  and  perhaps  no  rounded  and  perfect  synthesis 

32 


THACKERAY 

\^ 

gives  the  sense  of  it  quite  as  well  as  a:  representation 
that  images  its  inequalities. 

It  is  this  sense  of  life  that  rules  in  the  books  just 
mentioned.  It  appears  in  its  intensity  in  "Vanity 
Fair,"  in  its  variety  in  "  The  Newcomes,"  in  its  im- 
mitigability  in  "  Pendennis,"  with  a  definiteness  and 
reality  to  be  found  elsewhere  only  in  the  few  great 
classics  of  literature.  The  tension  of  "  Vanity  Fair  "  is 
almost  oppressive.  The  first-fruits  of  Thackeray's  ma- 
turity, after  the  Titmarsh  period,  and  coming  as  it  did 
into  the  world  of  fiction  occupied  by  the  writers  bur- 
lesqued in  the  "  Novels  by  Eminent  Hands,"  its  substi- 
tution of  truth  for  convention  had  something  almost 
fierce  in  it.  The  title  alone,  the  few  words  "  Before  the 
Curtain,"  the  last  paragraph  of  the  book,  pointed  its 
felicity  of  extreme  pertinence,  and  any  one  could  see 
that  a  new  power  in  fiction  had  arisen.  But  it  is  not 
its  satiric  force  that  has  preserved  it.  It  has  the  peren- 
nial interest  of  fundamental  spontaneity,  and  its  tinge  of 
Juvenalian  color  merely  accentuates  its  positive  and  con- 
structive quality.  Life  in  it  is  tremendously  real,  what- 
ever its  goal  It  is  not  a  fairy-tale,  and  things  are  far 
from  what  they  seem.  Any  episode  or  incident  or  sub- 
ordinate character  of  the  story  shares  its  intensity.  The 
unedifying  career  of  Jos  Sedley,  for  example,  is  grimly 
vital.  I  remember  no  book  which  is,  like  "Vanity 
Fair,"  a  portrayal  of  life  rather  than  purely  a  satire 
that  is  so  free  from  triviality. 

"Pendennis"  is  a  diiferent  picture  altogether.  It 
33 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

is  pervaded  by  a  blander  air,  but  the  sense  of  life  in 
it  is  as  distinct  as  in  its  intenser  predecessor.  "With 
^'reater  elaboration  and  ampler  illustration  it  shows 
tlie  weight  that  life  imposes  on  the  human  struggle 
for  the  attainment  of  ideals  as  such,  the  idleness  of 
combating  it,  the  necessity  of  compromise,  the  unique 
safety  of  humility  in  the  presence  of  its  overwhelm- 
ing pressure,  the  dignity  and  importance  of  it,  which 
become  tyranny  in  antagonism,  and  are  only  to  be  con- 
verted into  allies  by  preserving  an  attitude  of  modesty 
and  respect.  Life  and  the  world  are  different  things, 
and  doubtless  when  "  the  world  is  too  much  with  us  " 
we  miss  life  in  its  largest  sense.  But  this  is  a  triter 
moral  than  that  of  "  Pendennis,"  which  illustrates  on  the 
other  hand  the  philistinism  of  the  protestant  and  the 
non-conformist  as  vividly  as  the  pharisaism  of  worldli- 
ness.  Life  is  not  a  simple  tiling ;  its  prizes  are  either 
unattainable  or  less  desirable  than  they  seem  from  a 
distance ;  there  are  far  fewer  of  them  than  youth  be- 
lieves ;  the  problem  of  existence  is  prodigiously  com- 
plicated ;  it  has  to  be  reckoned  with,  and  largely  on 
its  own*  terms.  The  essence  of  the  book  is  in  the 
famous  talk  between  Pen  and  Warrington.  Nothing 
can  be  deeper  than  the  lesson  of  Warrington's  failure. 
Life  has  been  too  much  for  him ;  he  has  found  it  im- 
mitigable, as  I  said ;  but  it  has  left  him  neverthe- 
less at  the  true  centre  of  things.  Pen  comes  back 
to  Laura  at  last  after  both  wandering  and  soaring. 
The  end  is  repose  in  the  haven,  not  a  career  of  tri- 

34 


THACKERAY 

umph.  "  When  duty  whispers  low,  '  Thou  must,'  the 
youth  replies,  'I  can,'"  in  Emerson's  tonic  words. 
But  the  wise  youth's  reply  must  be  whispered  as  low 
as  duty's  command,  and  let  him  not  fancy  he  is 
greatly  forwarded  by  his  ability,  or  is  other  than  an 
infinitesimal  part  of  the  life  of  the  world,  which  en- 
compasses him  completely,  if  haply  it  does  not  oppress 
his  energies  and  render  them  as  futile  as  they  seemed 
to  Swift  and  St.  Augustine. 

As  for  "The  Newcomes,"  it  is  an  epitome  of  human 
life  in  its  manifold  variety  of  social  and  individual 
phases  unriiatched,  I  think,  in  fiction.  Its  range  is 
extraordinary  for  the  threap  of  a  single  story  to  follow. 
Yet  all  its  parts  are  as  interdependent  as  they  are 
numerous  and  varied.  It  is  Thackeray's  largest  can- 
vas, and  it  is  fiUed  with  the  greatest  ease  and  to  the 
borders.  It  stands  incontestably  at  the  head  of  the 
novels  of  manners.  And  it  illustrates  manners  with 
an  unexampled  crowd  of  characters,  the  handling  of 
which,  without  repetition  or  confusion,  without  digres- 
sion or  discord,  exhibits  the  control  of  the  artist 
equally  with  the  imaginative  and  creative  faculty  of 
the  poet — the  "maker."  The  framework  of  "The 
Newcomes "  would  include  three  or  four  of  Balzac's 
most  elaborate  books,  which,  compared  with  it,  indeed, 
seem  like  studies  and  episodes,  lacking  the  large  body 
and  ample  current  of  Thackeray's  epic.  And  its  epic 
scale  is  preserved,  not  in  mechanically  assembled  ex- 
amples of  different  kinds  of  mere  existence,  high  and 

35 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

low,  savage  and  civilized,  but  in  a  picture  of  life  itself 
flowering  variously  in  varied  characters  and  circles  and 
communities,  closely  connected  by  the  cousinly  bond 
of  the  humanity  they  possess  in  common. 

Taken  as  a  whole,  it  is  true,  Thackeray's  human 
comedy  is  less  comprehensive  than  Balzac's,  with 
which  alone  it  is  to  be  compared  in  the  world  of  prose 
fiction.  Taken  as  a  whole,  it  lacks  that  appearance 
of  vastness  and  variety  which  Balzac's  has,  and  per- 
haps the  appearance  in  such  a  matter  answers  as  well 
as  the  reality.  Considered,  that  is  to  say,  purely  as  a 
world  of  the  imagination,  Thackeray's  is  the  more  cir- 
cumscribed.  But  it  is  born  of  less  travail ;  it  is  con- 
structed with  the  effortless  ease  of  greater  spontaneity ; 
its  preliminary  simplification  has  been  carried  farther ; 
and,  if  less  complicated  and  ingenious,  less  speculative 
and  suggestive,  it  is  far  more  real.  Its  philosophy  is 
more  human,  more  winning,  more  attaching,  and  in 
a  very  deep  sense  more  profound.  The  note  of  arti- 
ficiality, the  fly  in  Balzac's  ointment,  the  weak  point 
in  his  superb  equipment,  never  appears  in  Thackeray. 
His  charm  is  infinitely  greater.  His  power  is  rendered 
at  least  equivalent  by  its  conjunction  with  the  sim- 
plicity that  Balzac  lacks..  And  his  narrower  range  is 
perhaps  to  be  ascribed  to  his  lesser  absorption,  per- 
haps to  the  less  varied  and  more  conventional  world 
that  he  had  to  depict.  At  any  rate,  it  proceeds  from 
no  inferiority  to  his  great  contemporary  and  compeer 
in  native  equipment  and  vital  force  for  the  specific 

36 


THACKERAY 


work  of  the  novelist  —  the  portrayal  of  the  play  of 
human  forces,  inspired  and  directed  by  searching 
scrutiny  of  the  human  heart. 


Thackeray  is  said  to  have  remarked  of  himself 
that  he  had  no  head  above  his  eyes.  It  might  be  con- 
tended that  with  such  eyes  as  his  he  needed  none. 
But  the  statement  is  misleading.  It  is  true  that  he 
had  no  talent  for  abstract  thinking,  for  abstruse 
philosophy.  But  to  assume  that  he  has  no  pliilosophy 
would  be  to  ignore  the  significance  of  one  of  the  most 
definite  and  complete  syntheses  of  human  phenomena 
that  have  ever  been  made,  and  a  synthesis,  moreover, 
incomparably  buttressed  by  the  acutest  analysis  and 
the  most  copious  illustration.  He  does  not  stimulate 
thought,  in  the  sense  of  speculation,  so  much  as  he 
arouses  reflection.  His  ideas  are  moral  ideas  rather 
than  metaphysical — the  ideas  for  which  Voltaire  eu- 
logized English  poetry.  And  he  deals  with  them 
powerfully,  cogently,  winningly,  rather  than  refining 
upon  them  and  following  out  their  evolution  as  a  dis- 
interested exercise  of  the  mind.  They  are  the  ideas, 
too,  that  inspire  human  motives  and  govern  human 
action  in  familiar  life  and  in  the  individual,  that  con- 
tribute to  the  making  or  unmaking  of  character — his 
chief  preoccupation — rather  than  to  the  development 
of  the  intelligence.     He  is  not  a  sociologist  like  Bal- 

37 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

zac ;  he  is  not  interested  in  currents  and  movements 
of  tlioiight ;  he  is  not  devoted  to  wliat  are  called  gen- 
eral ideas  as  such.  Matthew  Arnold  calls  the  Master 
of  Eavenswood  "  by  far  the  most  interesting  of  Scott's 
characters  because  the  spirit  of  fatality  seems  to  set  its 
mark  on  liim  from  the  first."  Thackeray's  reference 
to  this  rather  invertebrate  personage  is,  "  I  have  never 
cared  for  the  Master  of  Eavenswood  or  fetched  his  hat 
out  of  the  water  since  he  dropped  it  there  when  I  last 
met  him  {circa  1825)."  Nothing  could  better  illustrate 
two  opposite  ways  of  looking  at  the  world  of  life  and 
art.  The  concrete  illustration  of  ideas  in  character  is 
what  interests  Thackeray  and  what  he  interests  us 
with.  But  in  this  his  interest  and  his  power  of  inter- 
esting us  are  hardly  to  be  measured.  When  he  is 
called  a  "realist"  something  more  is  —  consciously  or 
vaguely — meant  than  that  his  novels  are  pictures  of 
life  rather  than  classic  or  romantic  compositions.  It 
is  meant  that  his  philosophy  is  realistic — that  is  to 
say,  based  on  the  data  furnished  by  the  perceptive 
faculties,  faculties  which  in  his  case,  it  cannot  be  too 
often  repeated,  were  of  amazing  sharpness..  There  is 
no  missing  the  tenor  of  his  gospel,  which  is  that  char- 
acter is  the  one  thing  of  importance  in  life ;  that  it  is 
tremendously  complex,  and  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world  to  misconceive  both  in  ourselves  and  in  others ; 
that  truth  is  the  one  instrument  of  its  perfecting,  and 
the  one  subject  worthy  of  pursuit ;  and  that  the  study 
of  trath  discloses  littlenesses  and  futilities  in  it  at  its 

38 


THACKERAY 

best  for  which  the  only  cloak  is  charity,  and  the  only 
consolation  and  atonement  the  cultivation  of  the 
affections. 

"There  is  life  and  death  going  on  in  everything, 
truth  and  lies  always  at  battle.  Pleasure  is  always 
warring  against  self-restraint ;  doubt  is  always  crying 
'  Pshaw ! '  and  sneering.  A  man  in  life,  a  humoristjn- 
writing  about  life^sways  over  to  one  principle  or  the 
other  and  Taughs  with  the  reverence  for  right  and  the 
love  of  truth  in  his  heart,  or  laughs  at  these  from  the 
other  side.  ...  I  cannot  help  telling  the  truth  as  I 
view  it,  and  describing  what  I  see.  To  describe  it 
otherwise  than  it  seems  to  me  would  be  falsehood  to 
that  calling  in  which  it  has  pleased  Heaven  to  place 
me,  treason  to  that  conscience  which  says  that  men  are 
weak,  that  truth  must  be  told,  that  fault  must  be 
owned,  that  pardon  must  be  prayed  for,  and  that  love 
reigns  supreme  over  all." 

That  is  Thackeray's  philosophy  in  small  compass. 
There  is  nothing  very  new  about  it.     It  is  as  old, 

«  Here  at  St.  Peter's  of  Cornhill, 
As  yonder  on  the  Mount  of  Hermon." 

It  is  simply  the  natural  truth  underlying  the  dogma 
and  informing  the  spirit  of  Christianity.  The  force 
that  overthrew  the  civilization  of  the  ancient  world 
was  certainly  an  overwhelming  movement  of  spiritual 
feeling,  and  since  then  philosophy  has  had  to  reckon, 
at  all  events,  with  the  soul  as  well  as  with  the  mind. 

39 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

If  Thackeray  had  no  head  above  his  eyes,  he  had  at 
least  a  heart  below  them,  and  the  fact  is  a  controlling 
influence  in  his  pliilosophy.  "  Sure  love  vincU  omnia," 
exclaims  Colonel  Esmond  in  a  familiar  passage,  and 
the  principle  is  everywhere  fundamental  in  Thackeray's 
"reahstic"  scheme  of  things — not  love  between  the 
sexes  necessarily,  nor  particularly  in  any  of  its  mani- 
festations, but  love  as  the  universal  principle  to  which 
true  salvation  is  inseparably  attached.  Humor  is  "  wit 
and  love,"  in  his  definition.  Love  is  the  inspiration  of 
the  "awe"  and  "reverence"  and  "tenderness"  he  is 
constantly  celebrating,  of  the  humility  and  simplicity 
he  incarnates  in  his  winning  characters,  as  the  lack  of 
it  is  the  weakness  of  his  reprehensible  ones.  He  re- 
volts from  Swift  because  he  "  placards  himself  as  a 
professional  hater  of  his  own  kind  .  .  .  the  suffering, 
the  weak,  the  erring,  the  wicked,  if  you  will,  but  still 
the  friendly,  the  loving  children  of  God  our  Father." 
Although  quarrelling  with  Dickens's  art  "  a  thousand 
and  a  thousand  times,"  as  he  says,  he  recognizes  in 
Dickens's  genius  "a  commission  from  that  divine 
beneficence  whose  blessed  task  we  know  it  wUl  one 
day  be  to  wipe  every  tear  from  every  eye."  Hood's 
"  Song  of  the  Shirt "  is  to  liim  "  a  great  act  of  charity 
to  the  world."  His  gospel  is  Voltaire's  apotheosis  of 
good  sense,  plus  heart.  If  his  good  sense  is  not  as 
cheery  and  unfailing  as  Voltaire's,  if  fault  and  weak- 
ness were  ever  present  with  liim,  and,  humanly  speak- 
ing, the   futility   of   all   things   impresses   him   more 

40 


THACKERAY 

deeply  than  it  does  minds  of  perfect  sanity,  if  there 
is  a  touch  of  melancholy  in  his  mirth  and  the  tem- 
peramental reaction  follows  the  indulgence  of  his 
highest  spirits,  he  regains  his  philosophic  equilibrium 
always  by  instinctive  reference  to  his  just  as  clearly 
perceived  principle  of  the  love  which,  as  he  says, 
"reigns  supreme  over  alL"  It  is  open  to  any  one  to 
object  to  this  philosophy  as  trite,  but  it  is  at  least  a 
philosophy,  and  Thackeray's  philosophic  force  and 
originality  consist  in  his  rediscovering  it  for  himself, 
in  his  making  it  his  own  in  virtue  of  basing  his  ad- 
herence to  it  on  his  own  experience  and  observation, 
in  the  sureness  of  liis  reliance  upon  it  after  an  abso- 
lutely candid  and  wonderfully  searching  examination  of 
the  data  of  human  life,  and  in  the  convincing  elo- 
quence with  which  his  inductions  therefrom  bring  its 
soundness  and  sweetness  home  to  the  thinking  reader. 


VI 

"Whatevek  judgment  of  Thackeray's  art  and  sub- 
stance proves  final,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  contem- 
porary verdict  of  his  style  will  stand.  "  Thackeray  is 
not,  I  think,  a  great  writer,"  Matthew  Arnold  observed, 
but  at  any  rate  his  style  is  that  of  one.  "What  a  great 
writer  is,  in  his  view,  Arnold  has  formulated  in  his 
remark  that  "  the  problem  is  to  express  new  and  pro- 
found ideas  in  a  perfectly  sound  and  classical  style," 
and  his  refusal  to  recognize  in  Addison  a  writer  of  the 

41 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

first  rank  is  based  on  "  tlie  commonplace  of  his  ideas." 
It  is  idly  possible  to  call  Thackeray's  ideas  common- 
place, but  his  style  is  at  all  events  perfectly  sound  and 
classical.  It  is  not  the  style  of  Burke,  whom  Arnold 
calls  "  our  greatest  English  prose-writer " — probably 
because,  together  with  his  incomparable  style,  Burke's 
distinction  is,  as  he  says,  that  he  saturates  poUtics  with 
thought.  It  is,  however,  far  more  perfectly  sound  and 
classical.  Burke's  elevation  does  not  wholly  save  his 
style  from  that  tincture  of  rhetoric  which  is  the  vice  of 
English  style  in  general — that  rhetorical  color  which  is 
so  clearly  marked  in  the  contentious  special  pleading  of 
Macaulay,  in  the  exaltation  of  Carlyle,  in  the  rhapsody 
of  Ruskin,  in  the  periodic  stateliness  of  Gibbon,  and 
even  in  the  dignity  of  Jeremy  Taylor.  Thackeray's  is 
as  destitute  of  tliis  element  as  Swift's  or  Addison's, 
with  which,  of  course,  it  is  rather  to  be  compared. 
Pthetoric  means  the  obvious  ordering  of  language  with 
a  view  to  effect — when  it  does  not  spring  from  the  ele- 
mentary desire  simply  to  relieve  one's  mind ;  and  the 
great  merit  of  the  Queen  Anne  writers — from  whom 
Thackeray  derives  —  is  their  freedom  from  this  element 
of  artistic  mediocrity.  It  is  to  this  turn  for  elegance 
rather  than  rhetoric  —  as  unfortunate  perhaps  in  its 
poetry  as  beneficial  in  its  prose  —  that  the  Queen  Anne 
age  owes  its  epithet  Augustan.  Thackeray  is  undoubt- 
edly to  be  classed  with  the  world's  elegant  writers  — 
the  writers  of  whom  Virgil  may  stand  as  the  type  and 
exemplar,  the  \vriters  who  demand  and  require  cultiva- 

42 


THACKERAY 

tion  in  the  reader  in  order  to  be  understood  and  en- 
joyed. "  Xobody  in  our  day  wrote,  I  should  say,  with 
such  perfection  of  style,"  Carlyle  affirmed,  and,  as 
Thackeray  observes  of  Gibbon's  praise  of  Fielding, 
"  there  can  be  no  gainsaying  the  sentence  of  this  great 
judge,"  in  such  a  matter.  His  taste  is  sure.  In  this 
respect  some  of  his  writing  is  like  a  page  of  Plato.  One 
may  feel  shortcomings,  but  at  its  best  it  is  without 
faults.  The  vulgarian  can  see  that  it  is  flawless,  lack- 
ing as  it  may  be  in  the  glitter  or  the  rhythm  that  ex- 
cites his  imagination  and  quickens  his  pulse. 

Among  all  its  traits  simplicity  has,  no  doubt,  the 
most  relief.  It  has  the  simphcity  that  attends  the 
expression  of  any  natural  gift  for  the  expression  of 
which  the  artist  who  possesses  it  seems,  as  we  say, 
expressly  born.  It  is  the  simphcity  of  both  birth 
and  breeding,  and  it  is  in  virtue  of  it  that  Thack- 
eray is  so  often  said  to  write  like  a  gentleman.  This  is 
the  way  in  which  every  one  should  write,  one  reflects, 
just  as  the  discerning  but  unlearned  critic  desired  all 
painters  to  paint  with  the  directness  of  Titian.  It  is 
the  opposite,  in  this  respect,  of  what  we  mean  by  the 
professional  style.  Its  repetitions  are  not  mannerisms. 
They  are  the  natural  expression  of  the  idea  and  recur- 
rent with  it.  The  language  shares  the  fehcity  of  the 
thought  and  fuses  with  it,  instead  of  lending  the  thought 
a  fehcity  of  its  own.  One  enjoys  the  hmpidity  of  Ar- 
nold, the  liquidness  of  Xewman,  as  e%ddent  properties 
of  the  medium  in  which  they  ■svTite,  but  in  Thackeray 

43 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

you  are  less  conscious  of  the  niediuui.  His  language 
jjroduces  the  ell'ect  of  richness  by  its  fulness  rather  than 
by  scrupulous  selection  of  epithet  and  the  effort  after 
plasticity.  It  always  has  this  peculiar  sense  of  fulness, 
of  words  overflowing  from  an  exhaustless  store,  of 
expressions  natively  combined.  Its  ease  is  absolutely 
effortless.  It  is  like  Eaphael's  line.  He  can  make  it 
say  anything  he  chooses,  anytliing  his  characters  choose 
in  their  several  dialects.  In  the  words  of  a  recent 
writer,  himself  conspicuously  endowed  in  point  of  style, 
Mr.  Max  Beerbohm :  "  He  blew  on  his  pipe,  and  words 
came  tripping  round  him,  like  children,  like  pretty  lit- 
tle children  who  are  perfectly  drilled  for  the  dance ;  or 
came,  did  he  will  it,  treading  in  their  precedence,  like 
kings,  gloomily."  The  measure  of  his  style  is  not  the 
result  of  restriction,  but  the  contained  expression  of 
native  reserve.  In  passages  of  most  concentrated  feel- 
ing, such  as  Esmond's  tirade  to  the  prince  at  Castle- 
wood,  it  is  as  free  as  when  it  is  employed  in  leisurely 
narrative.  It  not  only  never  forces  the  note  of  declama- 
tion or  dithyramb,  but  it  never  runs  away  with  the 
writer  and  leads  him  on  into  exercise  of  his  gift  for  its 
own  delectability.  It  follows  closely  the  play  of  his 
mind  instead  of  itself  ever  fascinating  his  fancy.  And 
though  its  most  notable  trait  is  simplicity — its  sensitive 
avoidance  of  the  meretricious,  its  elegance,  in  a  word — 
what  gives  it  its  unique  distinction  is  its  color. 

And  its  color  is  directly  derived  from  the  constant 
and  active  influence  of  the  personality  of  the  writer. 

44 


THACKERAY 

In  Thackeray's  case  the  style  is  eminently  the  man. 
Addison's  elegance  is  the  elegance  of  colorlessness. 
Swift's  directness  and  power  are  clothed  in  a  garb 
whose  simplicity  eschews  the  play  of  personal  quality 
in  any  highly  developed  texture.  Eighteenth-century 
standards  discountenanced  idiosyncratic  expression. 
But  idiosyncratic  expression  is  the  marked  distinction 
of  Thackeray's  style,  which  translates  his  mood  as 
directly  as  his  thought  and  expresses  how  he  feels  as 
well  as  what  he  thinks.  It  has  had  imitators,  but  to 
imitate  it  any  one  must  assume,  for  the  time  being, 
Thackeray's  frame  of  mind  and  sentimental  attitude, 
just  as  to  speak  French  well  it  is  necessary  to  think  like 
a  Frenchman.  And  its  imitators  have  been  few  in 
number  and  not  lucky  in  preserving  much  personal 
force  of  their  own — so  completely  has  their  imitation 
involved  the  merging  of  their  personalities  in  that  of 
their  model,  the  overmastering  quality  of  which  as  an 
element  of  style  is  thus  eloquently  attested.  The  variety 
and  range  of  his  style,  which  are  extraordinary,  answer 
exactly  to  the  range  and  variety  of  his  own  thought 
and  feeling  and  share  his  extraordinary  vitality  and  in- 
terest in  all  sides  of  every  subject.  No  one  has  so 
light  a  touch  and  no  one  can  stir  us  so  deeply,  leaving 
the  nerves  unassailed.  He  speaks  happily  of  "  a  flash 
of  Swift's  lightning,"  or  "  a  gleam  of  Addison's  pure 
sunshine  "  extinguishing  the  "  tawdry  play-house  taper  " 
of  Congreve.  But  he  himself  combines  flashes  of  light- 
ning, gleams  of  pure  sunshine — yes,  and  very  pretty 

45 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

play-liouse  illumination  now  and  then  —  in  virtue  of  a 
witler  interest  and  quicker  sympathies  than  these 
Augustan  worthies  possessed.  And  not  only  is  he  him- 
self the  source  of  the  color  of  his  style:  he  is  the  source 
also  of  its  sustained  quality.  His  style  is  adapted  to 
the  largest  as  well  as  to  cabinet  canvases  because  it  is 
the  natural  expression  of  his  own  largeness  of  view  and 
depth  of  feeling,  instead  of  being  the  result  of  some 
rhetorical  penchant,  or  the  anxious  education  of  illus- 
trating some  idea  of  energ}%  clearness,  cogency,  or  what- 
not. No  one  would  ever  have  wondered  of  him,  as 
Jeffrey  did  of  Macaulay,  where  he  "picked  up"  his 
style.  Like  liis  art  and  like  the  world  of  his  imagina- 
tion, it  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  most  interesting  person- 
ality, perhaps,  that  has  expressed  itself  in  prose. 


46 


CAELYLE 


\,r^ 


CARLYLE 


When  Carlyle  died,  over  twenty  years  ago,  he  already 
belonged  to  the  past.  His  philosophy  was  of  a  general 
order  that  had  ceased  to  be  popular.  And  he  had  been 
long  silent.  The  papers  on  the  Early  Norse  Kings  were 
unimportant.  The  last  of  his  utterances  that  lingered 
in  people's  memory  were  his  defence  of  Eyre,  the  "Ilias 
in  Nuce,"  and  the  "  Shooting  Niagara  and  After,"  re- 
calling the  earlier  "  Latter-Day  Pamphlets."  The  im- 
pression they  left  was  not  an  agreeable  one,  and  it  was 
hardly  modified  by  the  amenity  and  gentleness  of  his 
Edinburgh  Address,  in  which  he  apologized  very  sim- 
ply for  the  tone  of  some  of  them,  though  asserting  still 
that  they  were  "  very  deeply  my  convictions."  In  this 
country  especially  he  had  few  friends.  With  us  in 
general  he  seemed,  as  he  was  long  ago  described,  "  the 
leading  prophet  of  Absolutism,  Toryism,  Slavery,"  We 
had  issued  from  what  he  called  our  "  nigger  agony  "  in 
a  mood  that  hardly  stimulated  us  to  the  difficult  effort 
of  impartially  appreciating  one  who  had  contemptu- 
ously misunderstood  us — not  indeed  feeling  such  an 
effort  very  incumbent  on  us.     But  neither  here  nor  in 

49 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

England  probably  was  the  public  prepared  for  the 
revelations  of  Froude  that  so  promptly  followed — the 
depressing  "  Reminiscences,"  as  if  they  had  been  wait- 
ing for  the  signal — upon  Carlyle's  death.  The  "  Rem- 
iniscences "  and  the  volumes  that  succeeded  them  gave, 
in  many  quarters  apparently,  the  coup  de  grdce  to  Car- 
lyle's vogue.  Vogue  of  their  own  they  notoriously  had 
in  a  true  succHs  de  scandale,  and  Carlyle's  friends  could 
only  denounce  his  chosen  executor  and  biographer. 
But  this  was  of  course  extremely  transient,  and  the 
result  was  an  immense  weariness  with  the  whole  sub- 
ject. Carlyle's  own  writings  fell  speedily  into  a  neg- 
lect as  complete  probably  as  has  ever  happened  to  a 
writer  of  anything  like  liis  power. 

The  neglect  has  continued.  Such  questions  as  have 
occupied  popular  attention  are  either  not  questions  on 
which  Carlyle's  works  have  any  particular  and  specific 
bearing — questions  of  art,  of  poetry,  of  science ;  or  else 
they  are  questions  invariably  discussed  on  lines  and  in 
a  spirit  wholly  foreign  to  his.  It  is  the  day  of  the 
specialist,  whose  syntheses  are  left  to  spontaneous  com- 
bination ;  of  the  realist,  whose  material  is  also  his  end ; 
of  the  practical  philosopher,  who  relegates  the  services 
of  the  deductive  method  to  pure  metaphysic.  Creeds, 
too,  in  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen's  acute  phrase,  are  "  expiring 
of  explanation,"  and  therefore  to  point  out  their  essential 
residuum  is  a  less  pungent  proceeding  than  when  it 
seemed  as  if  this  residuum  were  certain  to  share  their 
tate  in  the  absence  of  vigorous  protest.     Much  of  what 

50 


CAELYLE 

Carlyle  wrote,  the  gospel  that  he  expounded  so  conten- 
tiously  and  polemically,  has  now  become  a  part  of 
what  we  now  call  our  subliminal  possessions.  What 
once  seemed,  and  of  course  still  is,  elemental,  has  be- 
come elementary  as  well.  And  literary  manners,  as 
they  may  be  termed,  have  undergone  a  notable  trans- 
formation and  the  taste  for  contentiousness  and  po- 
lemics, especially  in  the  exposition  of  the  elementary, 
has  largely  disappeared.  Criticism  itself  has  become 
largely  impersonal  and  anything  like  a  body  of  doctrine 
in  a  critic's  works  seems  if  novel  an  impertinence,  and 
if  famiHar  mere  surplusage,  to  a  public  that,  whether 
wiser  or  more  superficial,  has  grown  greatly  more  civil- 
ized. 

It  is,  however,  difficult  to  believe  that  the  current 
neglect  of  Carlyle  will  continue  indefinitely.  For 
whatever  else  may  be  said  about  it,  his  work  is  litera- 
ture. In  the  first  place,  its  style  must  be  preservative, 
as  style  always  is  in  a  very  considerable  degree.  The 
"  Spectator,"  for  example,  will  always  be  read,  though 
not  for  the  reasons  that  recommended  it  to  Macaulay. 
And  whimsical  and  artificial  as  Carlyle's  style  is,  at 
least  in  excess,  it  is  too  vital  not  to  be  viable.  It  is 
idle  to  suppose  that  the  current  impassiveness,  which 
has  succeeded  to  the  earlier  impatience  with  his 
eccentricities  and  violences,  will  endure  in  the  pres- 
ence of  such  prose  as  distinguishes  the  "Life  of 
Sterling  "  throughout,  the  "  Past  and  Present "  largely, 
and,  in  parts,   especially  the  "Sartor  Eesartus."     In 

51 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

the  next  place,  it  is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  such 
a  sustained  exposition,  at  once  symmetrical  and  multi- 
farious, of  the  spiritual  side  of  things,  such  a  prolonged 
eulogy  and  aggrandizement  of  the  spiritual  forces  of 
life  and  the  world,  is  likely  to  suffer  permanent  eclipse. 
As  the  English-reading  public  becomes  more  and  more 
civilized,  more  curious,  less  emotional,  the  energy  which 
in  Carlyle's  early  days  attracted  it  and  which  later  in 
the  light  of  its  own  advance  seemed  to  it  mere  sav- 
agery, will  drop  into  its  proper  perspective  and  be 
appreciated  without  the  agitation  inseparable  from  con- 
temporary contemplation  of  anything  so  accentuated  as 
Carlyle's  indubitable  genius.  For,  finally,  his  genius  is 
incontestable,  and  it  is  a  genius  of  incomparable  power. 
His  work  is  everywhere  penetrated  with  the  power  of 
a  prodigious  personality  of  wliich  the  literature  he 
produced  is  the  native,  adequate,  concentrated  and  con- 
summate expression.  Such  a  sovereign  force  must 
survive  the  current  neglect  which  its  extravagances 
have  nevertheless  abundantly  earned  for  it. 

II 

It  is  curious  to  read  in  Fronde's  biography  of  the 
confidence  in  his  powers  felt  by  Carlyle  himself,  and 
shared  by  every  one  around  him  years  before  he  had 
done  anything  to  justify  it.  His  wife  married  him, 
she  says,  "  for  ambition,"  when  his  career  was  all  before 
him  and  when  the  little  that  he  had  accompUshed  was 

52 


CARLYLE 

altogether  disproportionate  to  the  time  he  had  been 
about  it.  His  family,  one  and  all,  looked  up  to  him 
even  when  he  was  a  very  young  man,  and  although 
they  could  not  understand  him  and  were  not  of  a  sort 
to  be  impressed  by  any  literary  glamour.  From  his 
early  days  till  very  nearly  the  end  of  his  life  he  was 
the  centre  of  every  group  he  happened  to  be  in.  He 
was  a  prodigious  talker,  and  on  occasion  drowned  op- 
position, but  in  general  every  one  else  was  content  to 
listen  to  him.  He  met  intimately  nearly  all  the  best 
men  of  his  day  and  his  personal  primacy  was  never 
disputed.  Every  one  felt  his  power  as  extraordinary 
and  as  something  other  than  force.  There  was  appar- 
ently nothing  he  could  not  grasp,  if  he  would.  His 
views  on  all  sorts  of  subjects  were  delivered  with  ac- 
knowledged ex  cathedra  authority.  The  authority  of 
others,  even  the  highest,  failed  to  impose  itself  on  him. 
From  the  first  he  judged  men,  even  the  most  cele- 
brated, not  only  with  perfect  independence,  but  with 
the  confidence  born  of  the  consciousness  of  unusual 
powers.  The  personalities  that  he  venerated  were  ex- 
clusively historic — excepting  Goethe,  who  was  a  for- 
eigner. He  had  no  deference — except  for  what  was 
wholly  outside  of  competition  with  him ;  his  father's 
character,  for  example.  Awe  and  reverence  for  the 
Creator  and  His  universe  considered  as  a  stupendous 
miracle  left  him  free  to  alternate  compassion  with  con- 
tempt for  His  creatures. 

There  are  few  of  even  the  greatest  men  in  whom 
53 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

such  conspicuous  conceit  has  been  so  curiously  con- 
doned. His  confidence  in  his  capacities,  however  his 
expression  may  now  and  then  have  failed  to  please 
him,  is  in  a  way  an  attestation  of  them.  It  imposes 
on  us.  One  feels  that  had  it  been  less  justified  it 
would  have  been  less  keenly  felt.  He  was  quite  sin- 
cere about  it  and  his  penetration  is  acute  enough  to 
trust  even  about  himself.  But  it  is  plainly  too  much 
in  evidence.  At  times  his  self-satisfaction  is  positively 
smug.  And  it  is  responsible  for  much  popular  and  un- 
reflecting disesteem  of  him.  The  conventional  reader 
to  whom  modesty  is  the  invariable  concomitant  of 
merit,  strong  in  his  commonplaces,  shakes  his  head 
sceptically.  The  "  Eeminiscences "  and  Froude's  vol- 
umes quite  scandalized  him.  The  "  Reminiscences  " 
are,  indeed,  a  revelation  of  self-esteem  and  depreciation 
of  others  that  it  would  be  hard  to  equal.  A  single  re- 
mark like  that  about  "The  Origin  of  Species,"  which 
Carlyle  says  illustrated  for  him  only  "  the  capricious 
stupidity  of  mankind ;  never  could  read  a  page  of  it  or 
waste  the  least  thought  upon  it,"  is  a  sufficient  charac- 
terization of  them  in  this  respect. 

Neither  humor  nor  dyspepsia  can  explain  or  excuse 
the  outrageousness  of  much  of  his  writings  of  which 
such  a  statement  is  t}^ical.  "What  does  explain  it  is 
the  extraordinary  self-consciousness  with  which  his 
conceit  is  associated — his  egoism.  Egoism  was  never, 
perhaps,  illustrated  in  such  completeness,  such  perfec- 
tion.     He   liimself   quite  as  eminently  deserved   the 

54 


CARLYLE 

epithet  "  poor,  skinless  creature "  that  he  applied  to 
Eousseau.  "  Perhaps  none  of  you  could  do  what  I  am 
doing,"  he  reflects  bitterly,  viewing  the  Hyde  Park  pro- 
cession of  dignities.  The  observation  was  true  enough, 
but  why  was  it  not  too  trite  for  him  to  make  and  to 
record  ?  It  is  the  railing  of  the  peasant  at  the  patri- 
cian panorama.  Even  in  his  most  objective  writings 
he  never  gets  away  from  himself.  His  personality 
confuses  his  history.  You  are  never  allowed  to  escape 
from  it.  It  is  obtrusive,  exasperating,  domineering. 
The  simplest  record  is  complicated  with  his  view  of 
the  facts.  In  his  "  Frederick,"  for  example,  he  divides 
attention  with  his  hero;  he  is  incessantly — weari- 
somely— parading  his  views,  preaching  Ms  gospel,  even 
complaining,  now  humorously,  now  querulously,  always 
superfluously,  of  the  difficulties  of  his  task ;  pervading 
the  scene,  in  short,  with  his  extremely  accentuated 
personality.  His  ideal  of  "  unconsciousness "  in  the 
famous  essay  on  "  Characteristics "  has  its  origin,  no 
doubt,  in  the  exasperation  of  his  egoism,  which  obsessed 
him  and  under  which  he  chafed  and  fretted  till  soothed  by 
conceit.  Introspection  irritated  him  supremely  and  made 
him  long  for  the  automatic  play  of  faculty,  which  he  ac- 
cordingly generahzed  into  a  millennial  principle  of  mental 
activity.  But  his  introspection  never  led  him  beyond 
self-consciousness  into  self-discipline  —  the  compensa- 
tion which  its  inevitability  in  the  modern  world  has  for 
less  egoistic  spirits.  Discipline  in  thought,  feeling,  and 
expression  is  the  one  thing  he  conspicuously  neglected. 

55 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

For  with  his  extraordinary  powers  and  liis  self- 
consciousness,  wilfulness  is  certainly  to  be  connected 
as  the  next  most  salient  trait  of  his  commanding  per- 
sonality. "The  most  shining  avatar  of  whim  the 
world  has  ever  seen,"  Lowell  calls  him  quite  truly. 
Only,  "  whim  "  is  too  extenuated  a  term — or  too  de- 
preciatory, if  one  chooses — to  apply  to  an  element  of 
so  much  energy.  His  surrender  to  whim  is  so  volun- 
tary, so  absolute,  such  a  sin  against  light,  that  to  call 
him  merely  "our  whimsical  philosopher,"  as  Mr.  John 
Morley  does,  is  both  patronizing  and  inadequate. 
With  him  caprice  means  not  intellectual  frivolity,  but 
a  temperamental  perversity  of  which  he  is  the  willing 
slave.  He  will  say  anything  that  inclination  or  even 
temper  suggests  to  him.  "  Once  more  the  tragic  story 
of  a  high  endowment  with  an  insufficient  will,"  he  says 
of  Coleridge.  It  is  the  exaggerated  "  sufficiency "  of 
his  will  on  the  contrary  that  renders  the  story  of  his 
own  high  endowment  quite  as  tragic.  It  is  singularly 
tragic  that  owing  to  it  the  weightiest  utterances  of  his 
splendid  genius  should  be  so  often  robbed  of  the  intel- 
lectual responsibility  that  alone  confers  authority. 

All  this  we  knew,  however,  before  the  revelations 
of  Froude.  Fronde's  fatal  contribution  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  his  master  is  the  disclosure  of  liis  lovelessness. 
The  genial  basis  that  theretofore  might  credibly  have 
been  inferred  beneath  the  various  phases  of  his  con- 
tradictory and  prevailing  "humor"  now  appears  as  a 
certain  aridity  of  soul.     One  can  hardly  avoid  the  con- 

56 


CARLYLE 

elusion — his  biographer  has  so  copiously  documented 
his  own  explicitness  about  it  —  that  he  did  not  know 
what  love  is,  that  he  had  never  experienced  the  sensa- 
tion of  it  in  either  its  tension  or  its  transports,  its 
energy  or  its  enervation.  The  remorse  in  the  refer- 
ences to  his  wife  in  the  "  Keminiscences  "  is  so  intoler- 
ably pathetic  because  it  witnesses  in  truly  fatahstic 
fashion  a  fundamental  incapacity.  His  feeling  for  his 
family  is  very  fine ;  but  it  illustrates  a  kind  of  ethnic 
devotion  to  the  clan  and  has  a  side  of  very  subtly 
vicarious  selfishness  quite  removed  from  the  "leaving 
of  self  "  that  love  is.  He  was  naively  ready  to  sacrifice 
his  wife  to  it.  He  was  quite  ready  in  fact  to  let  her 
go  if  she  had  any  doubts  about  her  vocation  as  his  wife. 
It  is  small  wonder  that  philanthropy  meant  nothing  to 
him,  that  service  of  any  kind  did  not  attract  him,  that 
his  heroes,  however  admirable,  are  never  winning. 
The  affections  never  retarded,  deflected,  or  stimulated 
him  in  his  steady  march  to  distinction.  Distinction, 
too,  was  undisguisedly,  even  professedly,  his  aim  and 
end,  as  much  as  it  ever  was  that  of  any  of  his  brother 
Scots  who  had  victoriously  invaded  the  "  mad  Babylon  " 
of  London.  It  was  his  "mission" — the  whole  of  it. 
Only,  in  achieving  it,  he  never  had  the  sliglrtest  temp- 
tation to  seek  it  on  any  terms  but  his  own.  Ap- 
parently he  never  had  any  temptations  of  any  kind. 
Duty  and  desire  were  curiously  interconvertible  terms 
to  him.  He  lived  a  life  of  ideal  integrity,  of  blameless 
conduct,  of  complete  consecration  to  the  development. 

57 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

and  functional  expression  of  his  extraordinary  powers. 
r>ut  his  nearest  approach  to  passion  is  petulance,  except 
when  he  is  occupied  with  reprehension  or  reproof. 
Who  ever  thinks  of  "  the  storms  and  tempests  of  his 
furious  mind,"  or  conceives  of  him  as  "  Miserrimus,"  or 
finds  that  "  liis  laugh  jars  on  one's  ear" — as  Thackeray 
says  of  Swift  ?  His  laugh,  indeed,  however  boisterous, 
was  largely  reflex,  one  suspects  after  reading  Froude — 
genuine  enough,  no  doubt,  but  hardly  "  infectious." 
Passion  implies  the  state  of  being  "  beside  one's  self," 
and  though  clearly  a  Titan,  and  a  wofully  wilful  one, 
Carlyle's  truly  Scotch  self-possession  is  distinctly  canny. 
His  temperamental  tumultuousness  was  singularly  intel- 
lectual. It  is  his  thinking,  not  himself,  that  is  agitated. 
He  could  never,  he  says,  do  any  long-continued,  "  de- 
cisive intellectual  operation"  without  getting  "decid- 
edly made  ill  by  it."  And  perhaps  the  exclusiveness 
with  which  his  mind  monopolized  his  feeling  is  at  once 
the  most  characteristic  trait  of  his  personality  and  the 
most  determining  characteristic  of  his  work. 


Ill 

One  of  the  tragedies  of  the  strenuous  intellectual  life 
is  the  disproportion  between  its  conclusions  and  their 
cost.  So  much  struggle  in  the  pursuit  of  mere  simpli- 
fication, so  much  apologetics  for  so  concise  a  credo, 
such  a  wide  waste  of  philosophizing  for  such  a  circum- 
scribed  foothold   of   faith,   such  a  sea  of   speculation 

58 


CARLYLE 

through  which  to  reach  so  narrow  a  strand  of  cer- 
tainty !  To  arrive  at  his  not  complex  philosophy  Car- 
lyle  passed  through  a  prodigious  amount  of  thinking ; 
demon-driven  and  tempest-tossed  in  the  process.  His 
own  account  of  his  abandonment  of  traditional  religious 
dogmas  is  acutely  pathetic  —  an  account  of  a  Titanic 
experience  with  issue  of  hardly  corresponding  impor- 
tance, one  may  say.  It  was  not  a  chastening  experi- 
ence. It  left  him  intolerant  even  to  the  point  of  ex- 
acting an  equivalent  one  of  others,  which  shows  that  it 
had  not,  in  old-fashioned  phraseology,  been  "  sanctified 
to  his  use."  He  reproaches  Coleridge  contemptuously 
for  having  merely  "  skirted  the  howling  deserts  of  in- 
fidelity." His  own  "  firm  lands  of  faith  beyond  "  were 
substantially  Coleridge's  country,  however.  His  title 
to  them  was  really  his  belief  in  the  superiority  of  the 
Vernunft  or  reason  to  the  Verstand  or  understanding, 
as  he  often  explicitly  says ;  though,  unhampered  as  al- 
ways by  a  sense  of  chivalry,  he  ridicules  it  as  mere  ap- 
paratus when  his  business  is  to  exhibit  the  vagueness  of 
Coleridge.  He  resented  Coleridge's  complacent  placid- 
ity. The  remark  that  "  Socrates  is  terribly  at  ease  in 
Zion  "  is  doubtless  accurately  ascribed  to  him.  He  would 
probably  have  grumbled  at  the  good  fortune  of  the 
penitent  thief.  His  own  salvation  had  been  so  hardly 
won  that  he  prescribed  the  purgatory  of  agonized  men- 
tal conflict  as  a  preliminary  to  the  paradise  of  settled 
conviction.  His  bitter  experience,  too,  in  a  measure, 
explains  the  vehemence  with  which  he  held  his  con- 

69 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

\4ctions.  They  were  not  very  recondite,  as  I  say. 
Fronde's  attempt  to  construct  an  extraordinary  esoteric 
credo  for  him,  out  of  some  disjecta  memoranda  he  had 
himself  discarded,  is  extraordinarily  inept,  and  reduces 
to  a  belief  in  God  and  the  universe  as  His  expression. 
"  The  light  of  your  mind,  which  is  the  direct  inspiration 
of  the  Almighty,"  is  the  criterion,  indifference  to  happi- 
ness the  basis,  and  "  work  not  wages "  the  end,  of  his 
philosophy. 

This  substantially  sufficed  him  in  the  way  of  philo- 
sophical baggage.  But  the  energy  with  which  he 
preached  exclusively  this  rather  exiguous  gospel  shows 
that  it  was  the  residuum  of  heroic — and  perhaps  to 
most  men  unnecessary — sacrifices.  Energy,  however, 
not  intellectual  complexity,  distinguishes  him — energy 
even  more  than  its  direction.  He  never  even  addresses 
the  intellect  pure  and  simple.  His  appeal  is  to  the 
heart  and  the  soul.  For  example,  in  the  countless 
changes  he  rings  upon  his  central  idea  of  the  un worthi- 
ness of  happiness  as  a  motive — and  the  eloquence,  the 
convincingness,  the  fire  and  intoxicating,  magnetic 
cogency  with  which  he  does  this  gives  him  his  place 
in  the  classic  pantheon — he  never,  so  far  as  I  remem- 
ber, calls  attention  to  what  is  now  termed  (in  a  jargon 
he  would  scout)  the  hedonistic  paradox.  The  reason- 
ableness of  the  statement  of  this  phenomenon  by  Jesus, 
"  He  that  loveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,"  is  quite  foreign 
to  the  Hebraic  spirit  of  his  treatment  of  the  general 
theme.     He  does  not  make  you  ponder  its  mystic  and 

60 


CAELYLE 

significant  import.  In  fact,  he  never  makes  his  reader 
ponder  at  all.  He  arouses  the  sensibilities  and  the  will 
directly  by  an  energy  of  pronouncement,  adjuration, 
irony  that  sets  the  sympathetic  in  responsive  \ibration 
with  the  definite  ideal  of  duty,  of  sacrifice,  of  perform- 
ance, of  abnegation,  so  intensely  felt  and  so  masterfully 
set  forth. 

The  traces  of  his  perturbation  are  to  be  found,  too, 
in  the  character  of  this  ideal,  which  though  definite 
enough  is  hardly  to  be  called  positive.  At  least,  it 
lacks — tragically — aspiration.  Its  end,  its  haven,  its 
heaven  is  rest,  not  activity.  "  That  is  how  I  figure 
Heaven,"  he  said  once  substantially,  "  just  rest."  This 
is  carrying  the  "  Entbehren  sollst  du  "  very  far,  farther 
than  Buddliism,  whose  inspiration  is  certainly  not  fa- 
tigue. "  Eest "  is  not  even  "  calm,"  the  partial  and 
temperamental  ideal  of  old  age,  while  youth 

"  —  hears  a  voice  within  it  teU  : 
Calm's  not  life's  crown,  though  calm  is  well." 

It  implies  the  weariness  of  exhaustion,  the  sense  of  de- 
feat. As  an  ideal  it  is  warped  by  agitation.  That  it 
should  have  appealed  so  strongly  to  readers  influenced 
by  Carlyle  indicates  strikingly  the  demoralization 
wrought  among  pious  souls  by  the  break-up  of  the  old 
faiths.  But  it  is  still  more  eloquent  witness  of  the 
power  of  his  energetic  preachment  of  the  irrelevance 
of  the  whole  matter  of  reward  for  duty  done.     St.  Paul's 

61 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

insistence  upon  the  expectation  of  immortality  and  his 
wish  not  to  have  his  disciples  sorrow  "  even  as  others 
who  are  without  hope"  has  been  much  exaggerated. 
And  this  expectation  itself  has  been  greatly  overesti- 
mated, probably,  as  a  selfish  motive  of  virtuous  per- 
formance peculiar  to  fanaticism  and  contrasting  with 
Stoic  nobility.  "  It  is  a  calumny  on  men  to  •  say  that 
they  are  roused  to  heroic  action  by  ease,  hope  of  pleas- 
ure, recompense,  sugar-plums  of  any  kind,  in  this  world 
or  the  next,"  says  Carlyle  of  Mahomet's  success. 
"  Difiiculty,  abnegation,  martyrdom,  death  are  the 
allurements  that  act  on  the  heart  of  man.  Kindle  the 
inner  genial  hfe  of  him,  you  have  a  flame  that  burns  up 
all  lower  considerations."  None  the  less,  to  have  kin- 
dled this  flame  in  so  many  breasts  in  a  rational  age, 
and  by  preaching  the  foregoing  "  allurements "  alone, 
without  even  recognition  of  the  fact  that  they  carry 
their  recompense  with  them,  and  without  the  elevation 
and  expansion  either  involved  in  the  gaudium  certaminis 
itself  or  attendant  on  "^dctory  in  it  here  or  hereafter, 
attests  wonderfully  both  the  intensity  and  the  kindling 
quality  of  the  preacher's  emotional  equipment. 

Carlyle's  intensity  of  feeling,  however,  not  only  out- 
strips his  thinking  and  thus  itself  dies  out  long  before 
the  manifestations  of  it  have  lost  their  momentum,  so 
that  these  come  to  seem  almost  mechanical,  often,  be- 
fore they  suddenly  cease  in  some  "  Good  Heavens ! "  or 
otherwise  essentially  inarticulate  interjection ;  it  is 
rarely  purified  into  true  exaltation.     Other  great  writers 

62 


CARLYLE 

have  felt  as  deeply,  as  intensely,  but  the  very  depth 
and  intensity  of  their  feeling  has  resulted  in  that  con- 
dition of  concentrated  calm  and  serene  possession  in 
which  the  mind  seems  to  work  with  an  unaccustomed 
freedom  from  the  embarrassments  and  obstacles  of  less 
sensitive  moments.  Carlyle  is  often  turbulent,  tumultu- 
ous, conscious  of  his  perturbation,  impatient  of  the  ob- 
structions of  coherent  utterance,  irritated  at  the  necessity 
of  efifort  in  expression,  exacerbated,  violent,  excessive. 
Despite  his  power  therefore,  which  rarely  fails  to  make 
itself  felt,  which  is  always  to  be  either  discerned  or  di- 
vined, he  is,  at  times  when  liis  intensity  of  emotion 
should  be  both  an  inspiration  and  a  constraint,  its  prey 
rather  than  its  instrument.  Thus  his  mood  monopolizes 
his  faculties  and  hampers  quite  as  often  as  it  stimulates 
his  thought.  His  effort  is  absorbed  in  expressing  it  and 
not  the  ideas  which  have  caused  it.  The  shading  of 
these,  their  efi&cacy,  their  attractiveness,  their  universal 
appeal,  their  relations  and  suggestions  do  not  entrance 
him  out  of  himself,  but  in  proportion  as  they  arouse 
his  emotion  sting  him,  as  it  were,  into  eloquent  and 
apparently  automatic  exposition  of  their  effect  on  him, 
into  excited  or  contemptuous  dithyramb  and  rhapsody. 
It  is  largely  this  strenuousness,  I  think,  that  gives  his 
philosophy  its  special  quality.  And  its  quality  conjoined 
with  its  character  gives  it  a  unique,  even  an  isolated 
position. 


63 


VICTORIAN  PROSE   MASTERS 

IV 

To  be  out  of  harmony  with  one's  time  and  environ- 
ment is  a  heavy  handicap  on  energy,  which  is  thus  in- 
evitably deflected  instead  of  developed,  however  it  may 
be  intensified  by  isolation.  It  is  inherently  inimical  to 
expansion,  and  Carlyle  may  really  be  said  to  have  de- 
voted his  prodigious  powers  to  the  endeavor  to  trans- 
form the  "  epoch  of  expansion  "  in  which  he  passed  his 
life  into  an  "  epoch  of  concentration  "  —  to  adopt  Ar- 
nold's terminology.  Unaided  —  or  aided  only  by  the 
futile  of  the  intellectual  world,  the  Froudes,  the  Kinjjs- 
leys,  the  Ruskins  —  such  an  attempt  must  be  both 
transitory  and  incomplete.  "  Epochs  "  are  independent 
of  individuals.  It  is  their  representative  character  that 
singularizes  even  the  Titans  of  historic  changes. 
Luther,  for  example,  who  attracted  Carlyle  immensely, 
disproportionately,  incarnates  the  movement  of  concen- 
tration for  which  he  stands,  and  did  not  produce  it. 
The  Eenaissance  produced  it.  It  crystallized  out  of  the 
expiring  expansion  whose  hour  was  over.  The  epoch 
of  expansion  which  Carlyle  contested  with  such  elo- 
quence and  energy  was  only  beginning.  So  far  as  its 
movement  of  thought  is  concerned  he  never  delayed  its 
march  an  hour.  He  hardly  even  modified  its  evolution. 
He  affected  powerfully  the  varying  feeling  that  accom- 
panied it,  but  the  feeling  he  aroused,  being  general,  was 
so  largely  either  absent  altogether  from  the  direction  of 
specific  practice  it  took  or  else  impotent  to  check  it, 

64 


CARLYLE 

that  this  never  sensibly  stayed  its  steps.  If  utilitarian- 
ism has  run  its  course  it  is  in  notable  degree  because  its 
programme  has  been  accomplished.  If  the  world  of 
thought  was  at  all  times  insufficiently  filled  by  it  and  ideal- 
ity flourished  synchronously  with  ever-increasing  vigor, 
this  was  not  because  of  Carlyle's  direct  contributions 
to  the  latter,  but  because  the  ideality  of  his  day  took  ad- 
vantage of  his  spiritual  quickening  in  the  development 
of  its  own  spiritual  philosophy,  very  different  from  his. 
Nor  is  the  current  reaction  which  Liberalism  in  the  ex- 
asperation of  its  discomfiture  would  fain  attribute  to 
Carlyle's  miscalled  Gospel  of  Force,  so  attributable.  The 
apologetics  of  the  current  gospel  of  force  —  in  whose 
persistence,  one  may  remark,  too,  in  passing,  nobody 
believes  —  are  wholly  at  variance  with  the  Eternal 
Verities  and  Immensities,  the  heroisms  and  scorn  of 
hedonism  which  form  the  basis  of  his  Berserker  credo. 
In  a  word,  no  writer  who  has  so  stirred  the  moral 
or  other  emotions  of  his  era  has  ever  remained  so  for- 
eign to  its  thought  or  so  out  of  harmony  with  its  spirit 
as  exhibited  in  its  specific  aspirations.  Specifically  the 
two  supreme  influences  of  the  nineteenth  century  have 
been  the  scientific  and  the  democratic  spirit.  And  each 
found  in  Carlyle  an  instinctive  and  a  deliberate  an- 
tagonist. Science  he  neglected,  democracy  he  decried  ; 
both  he  enthusiastically  and  at  times  ridiculously  de- 
spised —  as  indeed  he  did  everything  he  did  not  like. 
Science,  apparently,  except  the  abstract  science  of 
mathematics,  he  knew  nothing  about.     At  thirty  he 

66 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

was,  in  Froude's  view,  the  best-read  man  iu  England. 
For  many  years,  at  any  rate,  he  had  done  little  or 
nothing  but  read.  His  knowledge  of  history,  of  lan- 
guage, of  literature  was  immense.  It  was,  moreover — 
need  it  be  said  ? — assimilated  knowledge.  Compare 
even  such  elementary  and  cursory  evidence  as  the 
extempore  "Lectures  on  the  History  of  Literature" 
with  even  Hallam.  But  with  science  there  is  no  wit- 
ness of  his  having  a  speaking  acquaintance.  What  he 
read  of  economics  probably  only  served  to  whet  his 
exasperation  :  from  his  point  of  view  the  abstraction  of 
the  so-called  "  economic  man  "  was  inherently  trivial, 
and  his  impatience  found  the  relief  of  relaxation  in 
deriding,  without  examination,  the  "dismal"  and 
"  beaver  "  sciences  based  on  an  interest  which  not  only 
he  did  not  share  but  which,  on  the  contrary,  actively 
irritated  him.  Similarly  with  the  natural  sciences  to 
which  so  much  of  the  best  intellect  of  the  time  has 
been  consecrated,  which  have  had  such  a  prodigious 
influence  in  the  amelioration  of  the  lot  of  man  and 
which  have  so  markedly  shifted  the  very  foundations 
of  mankind's  speculations,  beliefs,  and  activities — foun- 
dations upon  which  it  is  within  the  truth  to  say  a  new 
literature  has  arisen.  But  it  is  not  his  ignorance  of 
science  that  so  much  distinguishes  his  position  as  out 
of  focus  with  his  day  and  generation.  Other  writers 
have  been  conspicuously  ignorant  of  it,  too,  without 
losing  their  authority.  Literature  has  often  been  very 
nobly  independent  of  it,  much  even  of  the  literature  of 

66 


CARLYLE 

our  own  time.  On  the  other  hand  attention  to  it  has 
sometimes  not  particularly  served  the  larger  purpose 
of  literature,  as,  for  example,  with  George  Eliot ;  or 
else  has  served  it  only  to  give  it  an  unsatisfying  and 
conventional  currency,  as  with  Tennyson.  And  Car- 
lyle's  insight  is  so  penetrating  and  clairvoyant  that 
often  it  easily  dispenses  with  its  aid.  This  peasant 
Scotch  Covenanter  did  not  need  to  wait  for  the  sanc- 
tions of  the  "  Higher  Criticism "  in  order  to  write  his 
essay  on  Voltaire.  His  isolation  and  antagonism  are 
mainly  emphasized  in  this  regard  by  his  lack  not  of 
knowledge  of  nineteenth-century  science,  but  of  the 
scientific  spirit  itself  which  is  so  eminent  a  mark  of  his 
century. 

The  scientific  spirit  signifies  poise  between  hy- 
pothesis and  verification,  between  statement  and  proof, 
between  appearance  and  reality.  It  is  inspired  by  the 
impulse  of  investigation  tempered  with  distrust  and 
edged  with  curiosity.  It  is  at  once  avid  of  certainty 
and  sceptical  of  seeming.  Mirage  does  not  fascinate, 
nor  blankness  dispirit  it.  It  is  enthusiastically  patient, 
nobly  literal,  candid,  tolerant,  hospitable.  It  has  no 
major  proposition  to  advocate  or  defend,  no  motive  be- 
yond that  of  attestation.  It  shrinks  from  temerity  in 
assertion  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  animated  with  the 
ardor  of  divination.  It  is,  in  a  word,  the  antithesis  of 
such  a  spirit  as  Carlyle's,  which  deduces  with  confi- 
dence from  conceptions  vividly  apprehended  but  never 
limited  in  thought,   intensely   imagined  but  neither 

67 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

scrupulously  examined  nor  rigidly  defined.  The  dis- 
tinction is  not  one  of  practice,  between  a  priori  and 
inductive  mental  processes.  The  scientific  spirit  has 
certainly  as  much  need  of  one  as  of  the  other,  but  it 
dictates  the  testing  of  its  initial  syntheses  and  holds 
the  revelations  of  its  "  immediate  beholdings "  to  be 
guesswork  until  tried  by  the  surer  standards  of  the 
"  logical  understanding."  It  has  its  weak  side,  in- 
herently as  well  as  in  excess.  Hamilton's  assertion 
that  a  mathematician  should  be  a  poet  implies  an  ideal 
not  often,  perhaps,  attained.  But  in  greater  or  less 
dilution  it  has  supplied  a  tonic  force  in  the  speculation, 
the  philosophy,  and  the  art  of  the  present  day,  a  stim- 
ulus conspicuously  lacking  in  the  writings  of  Carlyle, 
which  sag,  in  consequence,  often  into  the  vague  and  the 
questionable. 

Even  more  than  the  scientific  spirit,  democracy  has 
characterized  the  age  of  Carlyle,  and  it  is  its  democracy 
chiefly  that  makes  him  ill  at  ease  in  it.  He  lived  to 
see  it  run  its  course  perhaps  as  an  abstract  ideal,  but 
this  was  because  practically  the  century  had  become 
interpenetrated  with  it.  His  own  bitter  denunciations 
of  it  in  principle — of  course  he  never  denounced  or 
advocated  anything  except  in  principle — had  little  or 
no  weight.  The  reaction  he  preached  was  taken  by 
his  day  for  the  "  moonshine  "  which  he  termed  its  own 
convictions.  That  democracy  has  failed  in  the  exalted 
mission  with  which  the  eighteenth  century  charged  it, 
that  as  a  panacea  its  inefficiency  has  become  evident, 

68 


CARLYLE 

that  it  has  developed  unexpected  weakness  apparently 
inherent  in  its  own  scheme,  that  instead  of  radically 
revolutionizing  society  it  has  itself  been  modified  in 
many  ways  in  the  course  of  its  evolution,  that  it  has 
proved  a  disappointment  to  such  writers  as  Scherer 
and  Lecky,  does  not  obscure  the  fact  that  it  is  the 
working  hypothesis  of  the  world.  Dithyramb  in  its 
praise  is  doubtless  out  of  date,  but  it  has  not  given 
place  to  dithyramb  in  its  censure.  To  Carlyle,  how- 
ever, it  was  equally  abhorrent  in  theory  and  in  prac- 
tice, idiotic  in  idea  and  in  fact  inexecutable.  To  him 
it  essentially  contravened  the  order  of  nature,  the  im- 
mutable law  of  the  universe.  He  hated  it  instinctively. 
And  from  liis  aversion,  one  may  suspect,  he  deduced 
his  categorical  principles  of  a  spiritual  cohesion  of  so- 
ciety, obliterating  the  independence  of  its  units,  the 
right  of  the  wise  and  energetic  to  rule,  the  right  of  the 
foolish  and  weak  to  be  ruled — his  mediae valism,  in  a 
word. 

No  one  has  made  medisevalism  more  attractive. 
"  Past  and  Present "  is  a  very  notable  book.  The  re- 
constitution  of  mediaeval  life  in  the  picture  he  makes 
out  of  the  Chronicle  of  Jocelin  of  Brakelond  is  vivid 
and  telling — especially  telling  in  contrast  with  certain 
sides  of  modern  life  with  its  "  thirty  thousand  dis- 
tressed needlewomen  in  London  alone  "  and  its  "  cash 
payment  the  sole  nexus  between  men."  The  book  is, 
of  course,  inspired  by  the  desire  of  exhibiting  this  con- 
trast— a  desire  which,  of  course,  impairs  its  veracity.    It 

69 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

is  in  fact  a  pamphlet.  Along  with  the  spiritual  unity 
and  interdependence  of  mediievalisiu — "  Gurth  was 
hired  for  life  to  Cedric  and  Cedric  to  Gurth" — went 
many  qualifications  of  human  felicity  which  Carlyle's 
partisanship  neglects  to  note,  and  which  are  easily 
enough  catalogued.  But  it  is  not  so  much  his  parti- 
sanship, his  lack  of  the  scientific  spirit,  as  the  anti- 
democratic feeling  that  dictates  his  feudaUsm,  and 
made  his  preachment  of  it  fall  on  deaf  ears.  He  liked 
feudalism  because  it  meant  the  imposition  of  the 
strong  upon  the  weak  will,  because  during  the  day  of 
its  supremacy  the  people  were  least  alive,  because  force 
was  focussed  in  personalities,  because  the  mediocre  in 
all  departments  of  activity  was  sacrificed  to  the  salient, 
because  mind — which  he  testily  despised  —  had  the 
least  protection  against  purpose,  because  in  every  way 
it  contrasted  with  the  democratic  differentiation  of  his 
antagonistic  time.  The  only  aspect  of  the  French 
Revolution  that  pleased  him  was  not  the  rise  of  the 
democracy  but  the  punishment  of  the  noblesse.  For 
its  ideas  he  cared  not  a  straw.  He  was  even  blind  to 
them.  The  Revolution,  which  Arnold  calls  "  the  great- 
est, the  most  animating  event  in  history,"  was  in  his 
view  merely  a  moral  judgment  for  the  rejection  of  the 
Reformation  two  centuries  before.  He  never  felt  the 
slightest  interest,  the  least  curiosity,  in  "  the  people," 
in  any  epoch.  The  democratic  ideal,  however  theoretic 
it  may  have  been,  democratic  philosophy,  however 
rational  and  disillusioned  it  may  have  become,  are  in- 

70 


CARLYLE 

separable  from  humanitarianism  and  humanitarianism 
•was  itself  antipathetic  to  Carlyle.  Witness  "Model 
Prisons"  for  a  single  example.  Man  as  man  meant 
nothing  to  him.  The  dignity  of  human  nature  he  re- 
garded with  truly  Calvinistic  derision.  The  "  divine  " 
element  monopolized  him.  He  even  manufactured  at 
need  incarnations  of  it.  Hence  his  doctrine  of  heroes, 
his  view  of  liistory  as  the  biography  of  great  men,  his 
exaltation  of  the  exceptional  personality. 

Here  again  his  undemocratic  feeling  sets  him  aside 
from  the  current  and  movement  of  his  time.  History 
is  now  the  history  of  peoples.  Its  heroes  are  resultants 
of  popular  forces,  movements,  phases.  They  are  ex- 
plained, not  "  sent  by  God."  Even  literature  conceives 
them  in  this  way.  There  is  a  striking  contrast  not 
only  in  the  treatment  but  in  the  titles  of  "  Heroes  and    _ 

Hero  "Worship  "  and  Emerson's  "  Eepresentative  Men." 

Emerson  was  saturated  with  true  democratic  feeling. 
It  was  a  constituent  of  his  refinement.  His  heroes  are, 
in  the  words  he  cites  from  Sterling : 

"  Our  nobler  brothers,  though  one  in  blood." 

Carlyle's  are  exhibited  in   the   strongest  relief.     The     "^ 

darker  the  time,  the  greater  the  hero.     And  his  prefer-    

ence  for  the  darkest  time,  the  most  legendary  hero,  is 
significant.     The  result  is  a  kind  of  falsification  of  his- 
toric  color,  to  say  the  least,     EeaUy  his  hero  is  often    "^^^^^ 
admirable  only  because  his  environment  is  not  —  Odin, 

71 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

for  instance,  and  Mahomet.  Yet  by  a  curious  confusion 
he  glorifies  the  stern  times  that  could  produce  the  hero, 
merely  because  they  have  produced  him.  One  feels 
that  the  train  of  thought  is  a  little  insipid.  Hence  an 
aggrandizement  of  the  Norse  twilight  with  its  rude 
figures  over  the  diffused  day  of  Greece  and  its  commu- 
nity of  pleasanter  personifications.  Olympus  is  too 
democratic  for  him,  there  is  too  much  freedom,  too 
much  individuality,  as  well  as  the  lack  of  solemnity 
involved  in  less  gloom.  Even  in  mythology  his  instinc- 
tive preference  for  energy  to  light  appears.  In  mythol- 
ogy, however,  one  may  indulge  his  preferences.  To 
treat  the  graver  matters  of  history,  and  social  and  po- 
Htical  philosophy  with  mediaeval  hostility  to  the  vital 
force  of  the  modern  world  and  without  its  scientific 
spirit,  is  too  antagonistic  to  the  current  of  modem 
thought  to  be  convincing  to  modern  men,  and  too  par- 
ticular to  have,  even  abstractly,  the  cogency  of  utter- 
ance that  is  in  harmony  with  the  tone  and  rhythm  of 
one's  own  time. 


Of  course,  in  noting  his  tendency  to  make  of  his- 
tory a  series  of  biogi-aphies,  I  do  not  mean  to  assert 
that  in  theory  Carlyle  altogether  and  implicitly  denied 
the  representative  character  of  liis  heroes.  Quite  the 
contrary  is  the  case,  although  explicitly  he  derides  the 
disposition  to  call  the  hero  the  "  creature  of  the  Time  " 
and  exclaims :  "  The  Time  call  forth  ?     Alas,  we  have 

72 


CARLYLE 

known  Times  call  loudly  enough  for  their  great  man ;  but 
not  find  him  when  they  called  ! "  But  this  representa- 
tive character  of  theirs  he  assumes  and  never  so  much 
as  attempts  to  demonstrate.  In  strict  a  priori  fashion 
he  infers  often  that  they  not  only  represent  but  incar- 
nate the  spirit  of  their  time,  which  thenceforth  he  sees 
only  as  mirrored  in  their  personalities.  In  practice 
therefore  his  concentration  upon  them  becomes  a  study 
of  idiosyncrasy  instead  of  typical  qualities.  His  in- 
stinct interests  him  in  them  in  proportion  to  the 
strength  of  their  individuality,  and  this  is  often  the 
measure  of  their  wTirepresentativeness.  The  same  ple- 
beian antagonism  to  democratic  feeling  that  leads  him 
to  consider  the  spirit  of  the  time  as  negligible  except  as 
incarnated  in  the  hero,  leads  him  inevitably  to  magnify 
the  hero  in  his  purely  personal  and  particular  character. 
Thus,  for  example,  his  admiration  of  Johnson  is  based 
on  his  worshipping  according  to  the  old  formulas  in  St. 
Clement  Danes  every  Sunday  in  the  age  of  Voltaire ; 
though  for  his  attempt  to  rationalize  the  same  old  for- 
mulas he  has  nothing  but  ridicule  for  Coleridge.  In 
every  instance,  we  perceive,  what  really  interests  him 
is  character,  and  character  in  itself,  in  proportion  to  its 
energy,  intrinsically  and  not  representatively  at  all. 
Thus,  practically  speaking,  Carlyle's  history  is  apt  to  be 
history  just  in  so  far  as  his  heroes  are  truly  representa- 
tive, and  history,  moreover,  that  is  indirectly  and  not 
directly,  illuminating.  In  writing  of  such  a  character 
as  Loyola,  for  example,  his  historical  sense  is  merged 

73 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

in  the  passion  of  the  pamphleteer.  Ignatius's  person- 
ality attracted  him  as  an  artist  —  attracted  liim  viru- 
lently, one  may  say.  But  on  the  Catholic  reaction, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  significant 
movements  of  history,  and  which  is  in  a  sense  identical 
with  Ignatius,  it  simply  never  occurs  to  him  to  throw 
any  light  whatever. 

This  reserve  made,  however,  his  history  is  often 
wonderfully  illuminating  because  of  this  very  absorp- 
tion in  character,  which  leads  him  to  excessive  and  ex- 
clusive interest  in  the  element  of  personality.  This'- 
interest  of  itself  implies  a  moral  rather  than  a  purely 
intellectual  preoccupation,  a  superior  concern  for  the 
heart  and  the  soul,  a  quick  feeling  for  the  sentiment  of 
a  time,  which  when  it  is  sympathetically,  is  therefore 
truly,  interpreted.  That  is  to  say,  divination  discloses 
it  as  mere  inspection  cannot.  And  the  sentiment  of  a 
time  is,  measurably  speaking,  the  time  itself.  Accord- 
ingly, when  Carlyle  is  in  harmony  with  his  epoch,  his 
treatment  of  it,  though  never  impartial  and  often  exces- 
sive, is,  through  the  very  quality  which  in  other  cir- 
cumstances is  a  defect  —  his  predominant  interest  in 
character,  namely,  and  in  the  forces  which  constitute 
character,  moral  forces  rather  than  ideas  —  %'itally  and 
centrally  irradiating.  No  one  has  praised  this  inner 
method  of  Carlyle  better  than  the  external  Taine.  He 
calls  it  "  a  new  fashion  of  writing  history,"  and  he  goes 
on  as  follows :  "  Man  is  not  an  inert  being,  moulded  by 
a  constitution,  nor  a  lifeless  being  expressed  by  a  for- 

74 


CARLYLE 

mula ;  he  is  an  active  and  living  soul,  capable  of  acting, 
discovering,  creating,  devoting  himself,  and  before  all  of 
daring:  genuine  history  is  an  epic  of  heroism.  This 
idea  is,  in  my  opinion,  as  it  were  a  brilliant  light.  For 
men  have  not  done  great  things  without  great  emotions." 
Carlyle  himself  says  the  same  thing  in  sajdng  that 
Puritanism  "  came  forth  as  a  real  bicsiness  of  the  heart." 
For  the  exhibition  of  such  when  it  was  to  him  a  sympa- 
thetic business  he  had  an  extraordinary  aptitude.  His 
exhibition  of  it  then  is  extraordinarily  vi\dd.  "  Grave 
constitutional  histories  hang  heavy  after  this  compilation," 
says  Taine  of  the  "  Cromwell."  It  is  also  extraordina- 
rily luminous  and  searching.  In  the  "  Cromwell,"  Taine 
continues,  "  I  can  touch  the  truth  itself." 

Everything,  however,  in  this  latter  respect  depends 
upon  the  sufficiency  of  the  historian's  sjonpathy.  The 
French  Eevolution,  though  far  more  a  matter  of  the 
head  than  the  Puritan,  was  also  "  a  real  business  of  the 
heart."  Carlyle's  panorama  of  it  is,  at  least  in  sustained 
passages  such  as  the  "  Taking  of  the  Bastille,"  of  epic 
vividness  and  even  grandeur.  Pictorially  —  rather,  I 
think,  than  in  a  true  literary  sense  —  it  is  strictly  in- 
comparable. But  the  truth  of  it !  The  truth  is  not 
simply  altogether  missed,  as  it  might  be  by  an  historian 
of  political  or  other  formulary :  it  is  deeply  perverted. 
It  is  wholly  misconceived  by  antagonism,  by  a  hostility 
which  is  merely  the  complement  of  those  Puritan  pre- 
dilections that  make  his  "  Cromwell "  so  sympathetic 
an  interpretation.      "  Carlyle  judges  the  Eevolution," 

75 


VICTORIAN  PROSE   MASTERS 

says  Taine  again,  "  as  unjustly  as  he  judges  Voltaire, 
and  for  tlie  same  reasons.  He  understands  our  man- 
ner of  acting  no  better  than  our  manner  of  thinking. 
.  .  .  Generosity  and  enthusiasm  abounded  in  France 
as  well  as  in  England ;  acknowledge  them  under  a 
form  which  is  not  English.  These  men  were  devoted 
to  abstract  truth,  as  the  Puritan  to  divine  truth ;  they 
followed  philosophy  as  the  Puritan  followed  religion ; 
they  had  for  their  aim  universal  salvation,  as  the  Puri- 
tan had  individual  salvation.  They  fought  against  evil 
in  society,  as  the  Puritan  fought  it  in  the  soul.  Tliey 
were  generous  as  the  Puritans  were  virtuous.  They 
had,  like  them,  a  heroism,  but  sympathetic,  sociable, 
ready  to  proselytize,  which  reformed  Europe,  while  the 
English  one  only  served  England." 

There  is  no  escaping  from  the  justice  of  this  judg- 
ment, and  it  is  a  terribly  severe  one.  The  words  I 
have  cited  contain  more  candor  in  making  distinctions 
where  distinctions  are  of  vital,  of  absolute,  importance, 
than  is  to  be  found  in  all  Carlyle's  works.  Plainly  the 
inner  method  serves  the  historian  ill — pillories  him, 
indeed — if  it  is  not  applied  by  an  imagination  which 
can  divine  phenomena  lying  without  the  confines  of  its 
temperamental  prejudices.  It  is  not  sufficient  for  him 
to  place  himself  at  the  very  centre  of  another's  stand- 
point ;  he  must  perform  this  feat  when  the  other  stand- 
point is  a  different,  or  even  a  hostile  one — the  faculty 
for  which  was  denied  to  Carlyle  as  completely  as  if  he 
had  been  devoid  of  all  imagination  whatever.      The 

76 


CARLYLE 

"Fritziad"  illustrates  the  fact  less  strikingly  than  the 
"  French  Eevolution,"  but  it  illustrates  it  amply.  And 
in  the  essay  on  Voltaire  this  appears  not  incidentally  and 
as  the  ^dtiating  element  of  a  work  otherwise  important, 
but  as  the  source  of  a  direct  and  positive  piece  of  sus- 
tained if  unconscious  calumny. 

VI 

He  was  certainly  an  artist — to  the  point,  indeed, 
which  makes  it  possible  to  say  that  he  is  quite  mis- 
conceived if  the  plastic  element  in  his  composition  is 
not  prominently  considered.  He  cared  nothing  what- 
ever for  art.  It  escaped  him  altogether.  When  he 
did  not  neglect,  he  insulted  it.  "May  the  devil  fly 
away  with  the  fine  arts,"  he  quotes  sympathetically 
from  some  enlightened  authority  or  other  —  perhaps, 
more  suo,  supposititious.  It  had  for  him  the  curious 
moral  connotation  it  might  have  had  for  his  Covenanter 
ancestry  had  they  known  of  its  existence.  His  rare 
admirations  are  childish  —  for  example,  the  feeble 
Dante  fresco  portrait  once  ascribed  to  Giotto,  his  in- 
terpretation of  which  is  as  absurd  as  anything  in  Rus- 
kin,  and,  in  another  way,  the  puerile  picture  of  "  The 
Little  Drummer,"  in  which  Frederick  figures  as  a  child. 
His  praise  of  Dante's  "  song "  is  inferred  from  his  ap- 
preciation of  its  burden,  not  due  to  a  feeling  for  its 
wonderful  integumental  music.  Froude  says  his  ear 
was  deficient  and  his  metrical  experiments  a  failure, 
which  is  true  enough  in  general,  though  the  translation 
■        77 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

of  Goethe's  noble  verses  in  "  Past  and  Present "  is  ade- 
quate and  even  moving.  But  any  appeal  purely  to  the 
aisthetic  faculty  he  suspected,  and  whatever  he  sus- 
pected, of  course,  he  either  derided  or  denounced.  It 
is  singular  that  this  does  not  qualify  his  worship  of 
Goethe. 

His  lack  of  aesthetic  appreciation,  however,  neither 
obscures  nor  obstructs  his  striking  powers  of  artistic 
expression.  He  made  his  own  picture,  to  which  every- 
thing he  saw  was  contributory  material,  and  he  was  so 
egoistic  that  the  combinations  of  others  did  not  interest 
him.  And  his  picture  is  always  sapiently,  savamment, 
constructed.  You  may  like  the  technic  or  not,  but  the 
efifect — and  the  effect  evidently  preconceived,  arranged, 
combined  —  is  not  to  be  denied.  His  praise  of  uncon- 
sciousness is,  as  I  have  already  said,  manifestly  a  reac- 
tion from  the  discomfort  and  often  the  misery  with 
which  his  extremely  conscious  composition  was  at- 
tended. No  writer  ever  thought  more  of  Iww  he  was 
to  do  whatever  he  did.  His  journal  records  that  he 
sat  three  days  before  the  sheet  of  paper  at  the  top  of 
which  the  word  "  Voltaire  "  was  written  before  writing 
a  line  of  his  famous  essay.  Certainly,  during  that 
time,  he  was  not  thinking  what  to  say.  And  his  effect 
is  always  the  supremely  artistic  effect  of  totahty.  '  In 
an  elaborate  work,  as  in  an  essay,  the  sense  of  the 
whole  prevails  with  truly  organic  persistence  in  even 
the  most  individualized  parts.  His  purpose  is  always 
an  informing  purpose,  and  his  aim  the  single  one  at- 

78 


CARLYLE 

tained  by  a  convergence  of  the  most  multifarious 
means.  His  art  satisfies  abundantly  such  definitions 
as :  "  The  answer  to  the  question,  How  ? "  "  The  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  ends,"  even  "  The  interpenetration  of 
the  object  with  its  ideal." 

A  moment's  reflection  will  assure  any  one  of  this. 
When  we  recall  "  Sartor,"  "  Heroes,"  "  Past  and  Pres- 
ent," "  The  French  Eevolution,"  or  the  ten  volumes  of 
"  Frederick,"  it  is  a  single  impression  that  we  recall. 
This  is  true  of  even  the  "  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,"  which, 
in  spite  of  their  variety  of  subjects  —  "  Stump  Orator," 
"  Jesuitism,"  "  Model  Prisons,"  etc. —  leave  the  definite 
sensation  of  a  prolonged  and  scarcely  modulated  shriek. 
Mr.  Lowell  complains  of  "  The  French  Eevolution " 
that  it  is  a  series  of  "  brilliant  flashes,"  and  that  we  get 
no  "  general  view."  The  narrative  is  episodical,  if  one 
chooses,  but  the  picture  is  composed  from  the  centre, 
and  its  unity  is  conspicuous ;  pictorially,  the  difficulty 
is  that  we  get  nothing  lut  a  "  general  view."  "  Fred- 
erick" is  a  masterpiece  of  concentric  and  centripetal 
miscellany.  The  technic  is  here  and  there  deplorable, 
there  are  waste  places  and  bits  over-elaborated,  details 
summarily  treated  and  others  caressed  out  of  all  pro- 
portion. But  when  the  immense  size  of  the  canvas  and 
the  heterogeneity  of  the  subject  are  taken  into  consid- 
eration, the  way  in  which  the  central  figure  is  at  once 
made  to  stand  out  in  accentuated  individuality  and  at 
the  same  time  intimately  connected  with  related  figures 
and  events  remote  or  near  at  hand,  the  result  seems  a 

79 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

marvel  of  artistic  unity.  It  might  surely  have  been 
better  done.  Herculean  as  the  labor  Carlyle  undertook 
in  it  is,  he  undertook  it,  and  in  strictness  should  have 
performed  it,  instead  of  punctuating  it  with  complaints 
of  its  onerousness  and  overloading  it  with  unconformed 
data  and  disquisition.  But  it  is  a  notable  work  of  art. 
The  "  Cromwell "  is  on  the  other  hand  superbly 
done.  It  is  in  its  kind  unique.  The  way  in  which 
Cromwell  is  allowed  to  paint  himself,  issuing  himself 
as  it  were  for  the  first  time  from  the  lumber  of  effigies 
theretofore  constructed  of  him,  is  unsurpassed  in  artis- 
tic vigor.  It  is  compassed,  too,  by  the  subordination  of 
stimulant  commentary  to  the  main  business  in  hand  — 
a  circumstance  that,  however  illuminating  the  method, 
must,  in  the  case  of  so  aggressive  an  advocate  as  Car- 
lyle, be  taken  as  eloquent  witness  of  his  contrclling 
genius  for  real  effectiveness.  Had  he  been  content 
with  a  less  striking  impression,  so  strenuous  a  person- 
ality as  his  would  not,  in  the  whole  plan  and  scope  Of 
his  work,  have  so  markedly  yielded  the  centre  of  the 
stage.  He  certainly  recouped  himself  somewhat  in  the 
entr'actes ;  and  the  "  Cromwell "  is  his  single  perform- 
ance of  the  kind.  In  general  his  art  is  disfigured  by 
the  converse  of  such  aesthetic  altruism,  by  caprice,  the 
caprice  of  his  temperament.  But  his  deficiency  as  an 
artist  is  deeper  than  anything  temperamental  —  deeper 
than  excess,  even,  or  the  defiance  of  that  discipline  of 
genius  which  art  has  been  called.  It  is  his  careless- 
ness of  perfection,  his  insensitiveness  to  beauty,  his  in- 

80 


CARLYLE 

difiference  to  quality  in  his  work.  If  he  thought  much 
how  to  do  a  thing,  he  thought  little  of  how  to  do  it  well 
—  well,  that  is  to  say,  in  correspondence  with  any 
classic  standard  or  any  ideal  of  power  implying  restraint. 
His  devotion  to  expression  was  too  absolute  to  be  qual- 
ified by  restraint,  and  nothing  else,  of  course,  will  exor- 
cise excess,  the  essential  foe  of  formal  excellence.  The 
inspiration  of  those  passages  in  his  works  that  are  truly 
beautiful  is  moral  not  aesthetic  feeling  —  the  noble  and 
affecting  fragment  on  the  death  of  Edward  Irving,  for 
example.  The  "  Life  of  Sterling,"  which  is  a  master- 
piece of  contained  expression,  of  sustained  style  and  of 
admirable  workmanship,  which  is  his  most  finished 
production,  and  which  may  stand  as  a  model  biography 
in  just  those  quahties  that  ordinarily  his  caprice  is  fatal 
to  —  the  "  Life  of  Sterling  "  is  inspired  by  the  desire  to 
free  his  friend's  memory  from  the  misconceptions  of 
Hare's  account  of  him.  Its  lofty  decorum  and  wise 
dignity  seem  dictated  by  the  occasion,  and  show  what 
he  might  have  done  had  he  conceived  purely  aesthetic 
ends  thus  deferentially.  His  "  Address,"  too,  on  his 
election  as  Rector  at  Edinburgh  is  —  especially  for  an 
essentially  extempore  address  —  marked  by  a  rare 
sense  of  grace  and  harmony  growing  out  of  the  senti- 
ment of  the  occasion,  which  appealed  to  him,  always  on 
the  moral  side,  of  course,  very  personally ;  his  apology 
for  the  furious  fustian  of  the  "  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  " 
is  particularly  touching.  But  where  he  does  not  feel 
the  pressure  of  moral  constraint,  his  art  is  never  dis- 

81 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

ciplined  out  of  its  excesses  nor  inspired  to  its  felicities 
by  the  effort  for  perfection.  The  disproportion  between 
expression  and  reserve  is,  accordingly,  extreme. 


VII 

In  expression,  however,  perhaps  prose  has  not  had 
a  greater  master.  He  could  say  anything  he  wanted  to 
and  with  extraordinary  energy.  His  style  is  a  perfect 
mirror  of  his  mind.  No  writer's  is  so  idiosyncratic  — 
so  intensely  idiosyncratic.  It  illustrates  not  only  all 
his  traits  but  all  his  moods.  It  brings  out  into  the 
starkest  reUef  his  defects  as  well  as  his  qualities.  It  is 
terribly  indiscreet  and  lays  bare  his  caprice,  his  lack  of 
deference,  his  defiance  of  discipline,  his  intoxicated  irre- 
sponsibility. But  it  does  more  than  this.  It  accentu- 
ates its  substance,  notably.  It  accelerates  the  momentum 
of  his  perversity  and  carries  him  along  with  it,  through 
a  crescendo  of  Berserker  surrender  to  the  wild  delight 
of  pure  and  utter  expression,  to  a  finale  that  is  often 
outrageous  and  not  infrequently  inept.  Never  was 
there  such  an  instance  of  the  faculty  of  expression 
running  away  with  its  possessor.  One  perceives  the 
explanation  of  his  paradoxical  praise  of  silence.  After 
excess  comes  reaction.  Self-consciousness  is  assailed 
by  the  sense  of  futility,  and  sincerity  sacrifices  its 
equilibrium  in  expiation.  After  a  debauch  of  violence, 
which  in  the  retrospect  appears  verbiage.  La  Trappe 
seems  the  only  refuge.     Then,  of  course  —  da  capo; 


CARLYLE 

endless  renewal.  Mr.  Morlej,  I  think,  pleasantly 
characterizes  Carlyle's  works  as  "  the  gospel  of  silence 
in  thirty  volumes."  But  it  is  not  this  illogicality  that 
is  so  conspicuous ;  the  gospel  of  silence,  like  any  other 
gospel,  must  be  uttered,  even  reiterated.  The  paradox 
really  consists  in  its  being  preached  with  so  much  ver- 
bosity, such  stentorian  tone,  such  lucus  a  non  lucendo 
cogency  —  at  times  such  splutter.  Self -consciousness, 
dissatisfied  with  its  own  facility,  on  the  one  hand,  dis- 
satisfied, on  the  other,  with  the  inherent  disproportion 
between  excess  and  cogency  of  expression,  shows  its 
exasperation  in  a  disgust  too  drastic  to  be  reasonable. 
"  Be  not  a  stump  orator,  thou  brave  young  British  man," 
admonishes  Carlyle,  "  at  least  if  thou  canst  help  it." 
He  knew  how  hard  it  was  to  help  it.  The  addendum 
is  illuminating.  Perhaps  it  is  humorous.  But  such 
humor  is  a  trifle  flat. 

Carlyle's  humor  is  in  general,  I  think,  a  trifle  flat. 
It  is  an  eminent  trait  of  his  style,  but  perhaps  the  least 
preservative  one.  It  is  almost  altogether  composed  of 
that  element  of  his  style  which  is  its  most  crying  de- 
fect —  excess,  namely ;  excess  and  caprice.  Style  im- 
plies consciousness,  in  large  measure,  and  to  ascribe 
humor  to  one's  style  instead  of  to  one's  instinctive 
manner  of  expression  —  as  one  must  in  the  case  of  Car- 
lyle —  is  to  characterize  it  as  artificial.  His  humor  is 
artificial ;  it  is  more  than  wilful.  And  artificial  humor 
depends  upon  novelty  for  its  acceptability.  Novelty,  it 
is  true,  is  an  important  consideration  in  many  circum- 

83 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

stances.  The  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner  that  re- 
penteth,  closely  examined,  is  doubtless  partly  due  to  it. 
But  in  the  case  of  artificial  humor  novelty  is  a  necessity. 
Such  a  specimen  as  the  address  to  the  Jesuit  in 
"  Latter-Day  Pamphlets  "  :  "  Prim  friend  with  the  black 
serge  gown,  with  the  rosary,  scapulary,  and  I  know  not 
what  other  spiritual  block-and-tackle,"  etc.,  may,  for  ex- 
ample, have  pleased  on  its  appearance.  But  the  novelty 
has  worn  off,  and  this  kind  of  tiling,  in  which  Carlyle 
abounds,  is  itself  "  left  naked  to  laughter,"  and  laughter 
of  a  rather  dreary  sort,  as  he  might  say.  The  image  with 
which  the  "  Cromwell "  closes  may  once  have  seemed  a 
grim  audacity,  a  kind  of  Rabelaisian  figure  of  heroic  out- 
rageousness,  but  what  strikes  one  now  in  reading  or 
recalling  it  is  that  it  does  not  ring  true.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  welter  of  epithet  and  oddity  with 
which  his  style  is  so  often  garnished.  His  allusions, 
comparisons,  characterizations  are  frequently  chosen 
out  of  a  sense  of  humor,  no  doubt,  but  clung  to,  reiter- 
ated and  played  with  out  of  deliberate  perversity. 
They  serve  no  end  of  illumination  often,  and  only 
illustrate  his  disposition  to  free  his  mind  wathout  con- 
veying anything  to  the  reader,  who  indeed  needs  a 
glossary  for  their  comprehension.  But  they  are  volun- 
tary accidents  of  his  style,  and  become  mannerisms  for 
which  he  displayed  an  increasing  fondness.  His 
underlying  spontaneity,  of  which  he  had  a  stock  pro- 
portioned to  his  enormous  energy,  often  showed,  ac- 
cordingly, a  surface  of  pure  affectation. 

84 


CARLYLE 

His  humor,  thus,  serves  to  betray  the  lack  of  genu- 
ineness in  his  style,  and  to  bring  out  more  clearly  its 
lack  of  artistic  sincerity.  It  bears  all  the  marks  of 
conscious  elaboration.  Original  it  undoubtedly  is.  It 
has  no  prototype  even.  But  its  originality  is  invented 
rather  than  native.  Froude  says  quite  truly  that  he 
had  to  make  his  own  audience  out  of  a  public  at  first 
perplexed  and  repelled  by  it.  It  was  deliberately  as- 
sumed, as  its  post-dating  the  correctness  of  his  earlier 
manner,  the  manner  of  the  "  Life  of  Schiller,"  shows. 
And  not  improbably  it  was  assumed  for  effect,  as  the 
phrase  is,  designed,  that  is  to  say,  to  arrest  attention 
rather  than  to  win  adhesion  for  the  substance  it 
clothed.  He  was  for  years  casting  about  to  "  do  some- 
thing" that  should  show  his  powers  and  give  him  his 
predestined  place.  The  "  something  "  proved  to  be  his 
style.  "  Sartor  "  less  fantastically  habited  would  have 
appeared  less  singular ;  it  would  have  appeared,  as  it 
does  now  to  readers  long  accustomed  to  its  eccentrici- 
ties, not  so  very  extraordinary  after  all.  Its  style  was 
its  Byronic  collar,  so  to  say.  Oddity  was  in  the  air  in 
those  days.  The  outward  and  visible  signs  of  tran- 
scendentalism were  quite  as  striking  as  its  inward  sanc- 
tion. Carlyle  eluded  its  superficialities  and  concen- 
trated his  fantasticality  upon  something  more  vital. 
He  had  awaked  many  mornings  without  finding  him- 
self famous.  The  long  delay  made  it  increasingly 
desirable  that  he  should  "  burst  upon  the  world "  in 
some  way.     He  did  so  in  his  style,  which  served  the 

85 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

purpose — his  more  or  less  conscious  purpose — per- 
fectly. 

Artistically  sincere  it  cannot,  at  any  rate,  he  called, 
whatever  its  origin.  It  is  too  patently  perverse.  But 
it  is  extremely  personal,  and,  as  Carlyle  developed  it, 
it  came  to  be  an  admirable  instrument  of  pure  expres- 
sion, its  excesses  and  eccentricities  matching  the  per- 
versities of  his  mind  and  giving  him  a  freedom  which, 
however  disadvantageous  in  other  respects,  enabled  him 
to  say  effectively  whatever  he  wished  to  say.  They 
grew  together,  perhaps  with  mutual  concessions,  until 
he  reached  the  ability  to  pour  it  forth  extempore  with 
an  ease  of  effluence  rivalling  the  song  of  a  bird,  the 
natural  gush  of  a  fountain,  and  yet  always  with  such 
idiosyncrasy  as  sometimes  to  borrow  from  it  character 
for  very  commonplace  substance.  No  writer  has  ever 
achieved  such  distinction  in  singularizing  ineptitude  by 
the  piquancy  of  his  style.  It  came  to  vary  directly 
with  the  varying  temper  that  vibrated  around  the 
course  of  his  most  constant  thinking.  It  is  the  vivid 
and  elastic  medium  of  his  gi'avity,  his  irony,  his  deep 
earnestness,  his  triviality,  his  vehemence,  his  sportive- 
ness,  because  it  follows  closely  his  every  impulse  and 
never  checks  nor  constricts  his  utterance  by  the  sug- 
gestion of  conformity  to  any  consistency  of  its  own. 

It  certainly  had  consistency.  So  marked  a  style 
must  indeed  run  into  mannerism  and  monotony.  But 
its  consistency  is  the  mere  reflection  of  Carlyle's  emo- 
tional state.     When  he  glows  it  is  vivid,  when  he  nods 

86 


CARLYLE 

it  is  dull  with  an  ashen  dulness.  The  moment  his 
energy  flags  it  becomes  mechanical;  its  elasticity 
"  sets " ;  its  artificial  side  becomes  evidentr  But  cer- 
tainly at  its  best,  that  is  to  say  at  his  best,  it  is  superb 
in  the  transparency  with  which  it  discloses  the  ener- 
getic working  of  a  powerful  mind  under  the  stress  of 
strong  emotion.  It  interposes  no  veil  between  the 
WTiter  and  his  readers.  It  is  wonderfully  direct  and 
wonderfully  plastic.  It  is  vital  rather  than  crystalline 
because  its  inspiration  is  feeling.  But  it  is  notably 
clear.  Incrusted  with  the  various  extraneities  of  ob- 
scure and  recondite  allusion  dictated  by  personal 
caprice  and  a  contemptuous  indifference  to  the  compre- 
hension of  the  reader,  the  thread  of  it  is  always 
brilliantly  plain — like  a  streak  of  scarlet  through  a 
tangle  of  green.  It  is  never  turgid  even  in  its  vio- 
lences, nor  involved  even  in  its  fantasticahties.  [Its 
vocabulary  is  enormous,  but  never  encumbers  it.  It 
eschews  pedantry  with  instinctive  felicity.  Its  epi- 
thets are  complete  characterizations.  Its  very  uneven- 
ness  heightens  its  color.  No  conceivable  style  could 
better  fit  the  picturesque,  and  in  the  external  world  it 
is  the  picturesque  that  absorbs  Carlyle,  as  the  moral 
does  in  the  spiritual.  The  world,  considered  purely  as 
a  spectacle,  impressed  him  as  a  chaos  of  confused  con- 
trasts and,  aside  from  its  moral  meaning  or  futility,  it 
stimulated  his  acute  sense  for  the  fortuitous,  which  is 
the  essence  of  the  picturesque.  Its  ordered  beauty  did 
not  greatly  move  him.     His  feeHng  for  the  truly  dra- 

87 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

matic  is  accordingly  a  little  superficial,  I  think,  though 
when  he  feels  it  on  its  moral  side,  he  treats  it  with  a 
splendid  eloquence,  as  in  the  conclusion  of  the  lecture 
on  Mahomet  with  its  "  within  one  century  afterwards, 
Arabia  is  at  Grenada  on  this  hand,  at  Delhi  on  that ; 
glancing  in  valor  and  splendor  and  the  light  of  genius. 
Arabia  shines  through  long  ages  over  a  great  section 
of  the  world."  One  could  cite  such  instances  by  the 
score,  instances  of  eloquence  untouched  by  rhetoric, 
untainted  by  the  common,  thought  and  expression 
fused  at  white  heat  and  glowing  with  a  purity  of 
radiance  that  is  the  very  mystery  of  genius  and  its 
power  to  transfigure  the  temperamental  plebeian  and 
the  hereditary  peasant  into  the  poet,  the  prophet,  and 
the  patrician. 

VIII 

"  The  moral  life  of  man,"  says  Froude,  in  one  of 
those  sentences  that  tend  to  make  Kterature  of  his 
writings,  "  is  like  the  flight  of  a  bird  in  the  air.  He  is 
sustained  only  by  effort,  and  when  he  ceases  to  exert 
himself  he  falls."  Carlyle's  supreme  service  to  his 
generation  is  to  have  stimulated  and  strengthened  its 
sustaining  moral  energy.  Except  his  notable  rehabili- 
tation of  the  Puritans  and  Cromwell — a  very  notable 
exception,  it  is  true,  yet  after  all  not  only  strictly  cog- 
nate to  his  work  as  a  moralist,  but  strictly  also  in  a 
sense  an  academic  excursus  of  it — little  else,  I  think, 
can  be  claimed  for  him.     Of  the  histories,  his  "  French 

88  '' 


CARLYLE 

Eevolution"  is  a  caricature  and  a  libel,  and  all  the 
pictorial  splendor  of  its  poetic  prose  cannot  obscure  its 
fundamental  misconceptions.  His  "  Frederick "  is  a 
j^ece  of  Titanic  special  pleading.  Freeman  remarked 
of  "  The  DecHne  and  Fall,"  that  whatever  else  was  read, 
"  Gibbon  must  be  read,  too."  Conversely,  one  may  say 
of  the  "Frederick,"  that  whether  it  is  read  or  not, 
something  else  must  also  be  read,  and  Mr.  Tuttle  need 
not  have  apologized  for  his  painstaking  "History  of 
Prussia." 

On  his  own  theory  that,  "  to  know  a  thing,  what  we 
can  call  knowing,  a  man  must  first  love  the  thing, 
sympathize  with  it,"  Carlyle  should  have  let  the  eigh- 
teenth century  —  "  ce  sUcle  sans  dme" — alone.  Man, 
not  God,  was  its  preoccupation,  in  contradistinction 
from  its  predecessor.  Its  ""soullessness"  revolted  him. 
Its  humanitarianism  meant  nothing  to  him.  Its  great 
discovery  of  the  dignity  of  man,  he  flouted.  In  its 
substitution  of  the  heart  for  the  soul,  its  rational- 
ization of  the  affections,  its  ideals  of  freedom  of  spirit 
and  faculty,  of  equality  of  rights  and  duties,  of  frater- 
nity of  interests  and  feelings  to  the  end  of  mutual 
advantage  and  co-operative  advance,  he  saw  only  a 
chaotic  scramble  after  the  ignis  fatuus  of  happiness, 
selfishly  inspired.  In  the  seventeenth  century  he  is 
at  home,  and  accordingly  his  "CromweU"  is  his  great- 
est work,  his  true  masterpiece.  But  even  the  "  Crom- 
weU" is  as  history  impaired  by  the  heavy  defects  of 
its  qualities.     As  its  eulogist,  Taine,  himself,  observes : 

89 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

"  Carljle  is  so  mucli  their  [the  Puritans']  brother  that 
lie  excuses  or  admires  their  excesses — the  execution  of 
the  King,  the  mutilation  of  Parliament,  their  intoler- 
ance, inquisition,  the  despotism  of  Cromwell,  the  the- 
ocracy of  Knox."  Different  temperaments  will  always 
view  them  differently,  but  historically  the  last  word 
has  probably  been  said  ■  about  the  Puritans.  And 
though  he  prepared  the  way  for  it,  it  is  certain  that 
Carlyle  did  not  say  it. 

There  remain  in  the  way  of  formal  service  to  his 
time  his  slight  and  suggestive  rather  than  systematic 
advocacy  of  emigration  and  education  as  remedies  for 
English  ills  and  his  introduction  to  the  English  reading 
public  of  German  literature — of  which  his  treatment, 
however,  was  notably  uncritical.  It  is  outside  there- 
fore of  his  partisan  history,  his  not  novel  philosophy, 
his  imperfect  criticism,  formally  considered,  that  the 
true  distinction  of  Carlyle's  writings  is  to  be  found. 
It  is  to  be  found  in  their  moral  cogency — the  moral 
cogency  with  which,  indeed,  his  history,  philosophy, 
and'  criticism  are  impregnated,  and  which,  rather  than 
their  historical,  philosophic,  or  critical  merits,  consti- 
tutes their  vital  value.  A  critic  of  the  absence  of  the 
practical  in  his  gospel  calls  him  merely  "  a  moral  brass 
band,"  and  contrasts  him  painfully  with  philosophers 
of  the  concrete  usefulness  of  Bentham  and  Mill.  The 
figure  is  hardly  just.  Morally  considered,  he  had  not 
the  rudimentary  organization  it  implies ;  he  was  rather 
a  double  orchestra.     But  the  meaning  is  sound.     Why, 

90 


CARLYLE 

however,  moral  stimulus  should  be  belittled;  why, 
above  all,  it  should  be  deemed,  of  all  things  in  the 
world,  unpractical,  is  difficult  to  see.  "  They  were  not 
madmen,  but  men  of  business,"  says  Taine,  of  the  Puri- 
tans. "The  whole  difference  between  them  and  the 
men  we  know  is  that  they  had  a  conscience."  It  is  not 
the  whole  difference,  but  it  is  in  the  highest  degree  a 
practical  one.  The  view  that  conceives  character 
rather  than  institutions  as  the  great  force  in  human 
affairs,  individual  as  well  as  social,  is  as  practical  as 
the  converse  view;  it  is  indeed  the  view  which  has 
mainly  determined  the  crises  of  English  progress,  the 
view  from  which  its  vaunted  "  practical  results  "  have 
proceeded.  To  celebrate  this  view,  to  enforce  it  on 
every  occasion,  to  converge  upon  its  significance  the 
sum  of  human  experiences  and  the  reflections  they 
arou^,  to  illustrate  it  with  a  wealth  of  example,  to 
extract  its  essential  dignity  and  nobility  from  the 
crudities  with  which  it  is  often  encumbered,  to  exhibit 
it  as  the  one  necessary  and  permanently  fruitful  con- 
sideration for  bringing  human  activity  into  accord  with 
the  harmony  that  is  not  human  but  divine,  to  exalt  it 
with  eloquence  and  preach  it  with  the  ardor  of  fire,  all 
with  a  view  to  the  induction  in  the  reader  of  a  distinct 
spiritual  attitude  governing  his  every  thought  and  act, 
must  seem  to  any  one  but  a  pedant,  in  strictest  compu- 
tation, the  most  practical  thing  in  the  world.  To 
assert  the  contrary  is  equivalent  to  calling  the  Levit- 
ical  code,  for  example,  more  practical  than  the  Sermon 

91 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

on  the  Mount.  Discussion  of  the  practicality  of  Car- 
lyle's  preacliing  is,  in  fact,  pure  verbiage.  What  is 
really  meant  by  the  denial  of  it  is  that  in  a  time  of 
measures  he  occupied  himself  with  men. 

His  real  limitation — and  it  is,  I  think,  a  tragic  one 
— is  not  the  miscalled  unpractical  nature  of  his  writ- 
ings, the  nature  they  share  with  those  of  perhaps  the 
majority  of  the  writers  who  have  influenced  the 
thought  and  feeling  of  the  world,  but  the  defective 
nature- of  his  spiritual  ideal.  His  conception  of  char- 
acter is  of  rectitude  plus  energy,  and  it  is  an  imperfect 
conception.  Character  is,  it  is  true,  the  basis  of  every- 
thing persistent  and  effective  in  the  effort  of  mankind 
and  what  saves  it  from  futility  and  chaos.  But  char- 
acter that  is  most  efficient  and  most  benign  is  charac- 
ter rounded  and  complete,  its  energy  tempered  with 
sweetness,  its  derivative  conduct  illumined  with  light, 
and  its  various  powers  expanded  in  every  fruitful 
direction  instead  of  driven  in  upon  themselves  in  con- 
centration and  constraint.  "  Were  we  of  open  sense  as 
the  Greeks  were,"  he  says  finely  of  the  saiHng  of  the 
Mayflower,  "we  had  found  a  Poem  here."  Precisely. 
Of  all  our  writers  he  most  lacks  this  "  open  sense,"  and 
his  lack  of  it  narrows  his  spiritual  horizon.  Beauty 
lies  beyond  its  bounds — even  the  beauty  of  holiness. 
In  his  hierarchy  of  heroes  there  are  no  saints.  He  is 
temperamentally  of  the  old  dispensation.  The  expan- 
sion of  the  new,  under  its  vitalizing  principle  of  the 
love  which  casteth  out  fear,  is  quite  foreign  to  him. 

92 


CARLYLE 

His  references  to  the  Crucified  are  perfunctory  and 
mechanical — one  would  say  obligatory  rather  than 
spontaneous.  He  never  melts  in  joyous  unison  with 
the  fair  smile  upon  the  face  of  Duty,  or  inhales  with 
the  dilutest  rapture  the  fragrance  that  treads  in  her 
footing.  His  almost  unremittent  tension  does  not 
relax  into  kindness.  His  exacting  demands  are  not 
tempered  with  tolerance.  "  On  the  whole  we  are  not 
altogether  here  to  tolerate!  We  are  here  to  resist,  to 
control  and  vanquish  withal,"  he  says.  One  perceives 
the  spirit  that  animates  him.  Beside  such  evidence  of 
it,  his  occasional  eulogy  of  the  "  EeUgion  of  Sorrow," 
even,  seems  a  concession  to  the  conventional. 

Of  the  four  powers  into  which  Matthew  Arnold 
conveniently  divided  humanizing  agencies :  the  power  of 
intellect  and  science,  the  power  of  beauty,  the  power  of 
social  life  and  manners  and  the  power  of  conduct,"  the 
last  only  interests  him  or  plays  any  part  in  his  gospel, 
which  is  therefore  wholly  addressed  to  the  individual. 
The  only  concert  I  can  recall  of  which  he  speaks  well 
is  Knox's  theocracy,  which  also  appeals  to  him  as  the 
ideal  of  a  millennium  in  which  all  the  individual  units 
are  righteously  disposed.  What  we  know  as  social 
forces  were  to  him  quite  negligible.  He  admired 
amenity  as  little  as  he  possessed  it.  He  praises  the 
"  broad  simplicity,  rusticity  "  of  the  "  Norse  System  " 
as  "  so  very  different  from  the  light  gracefulness  of  the 
old  Greek  paganism,"  and  argues  its  sincerity  from  its 
rudeness.     "Sincerity,  I  think,  is  better  than  grace," 

93 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

he  naively  adds.  And  indeed  naive  is  the  one  word  to 
apply  to  some  aspects  of  Carlyle's  point  of  view.  He 
knew  the  world  profoundly,  but  he  viewed  it  from 
Ecclefechan.  Moreover,  he  saw  his  own  principles 
through  the  prism  of  his  temperament.  And  no  writer 
ever  had  so  much  temperament.  It  injures  his  ideal 
for  us  and  makes  it  less  attractive.  But  what  is  far 
more  grave  is  that,  in  doing  so,  it  weakens  the  stimulus 
he  would  otherwise  afford  to  readers  who  would  other- 
wise be  drawn  to  those  of  its  elements  that  are  at  once 
noble  and  indispensable.  He  imposes  it  instead  of 
making  it  lovely.  To  earnest  souls — and  he  can  have 
no  other  readers — the  way  seems  hard  enough.  Car- 
lyle  often  recalls  the  anecdote  related  by  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  apropos  of  Fitzjames  Stephen,  perhaps  Car- 
lyle's most  distinguished  disciple,  in  which  a  stern 
confessor  tells  a  dying  penitent,  endeavoring  to  turn 
his  thoughts  toward  heaven,  that  he  "  ought  to  be 
thankful  he  had  a  hell  to  go  to."  "  To-day  thou  shalt 
be  with  me  in  Paradise  "  is  not  only  more  winning  and 
therefore  of  a  higher  potency,  but  it  illustrates  a  later 
stage  of  ethical  evolution. 

Nevertheless  Fronde's  striking  figure,  which  I  have 
already  cited,  is  justified  of  every  man's  experience. 
Every  man,  the  most  innocent  as  well  as  the  most  vir- 
tuous, knows  the  incessant  pressure  of  the  necessity  of 
moral  effort.  "  There  is  none  that  doeth  good,  no,  not 
one."  The  opportunity  of  doing  good  or  of  avoiding 
doing  it  is  exquisitely  adjusted  in  scale  to  the  ^egrees 

94 


CARLYLE 

with  which  perfection  is  approached.  Every  one  is  con- 
scious of  life  as  a  succession  of  choices  which  it  be- 
hooves him  to  make  rightly  on  pain  either  of,  at  the 
least,  a  sense  of  dissatisfaction  or  of  feeHng  that  he  is 
ceasing  to  count  at  all  and  declining  into  the  estate  of 
"  the  beasts  that  perish."  Of  himself  he  can  do  nothing. 
Effort  and  high  resolve  —  whether  labelled  "  the  grace 
of  God "  or  "  the  higher  self "  is  immaterial  —  are 
needed  to  dominate  the  "  law  of  the  members,"  which 
operates  instinctively  along  the  line  of  least  resistance 
and  tends  toward  the  greater  inclination,  and  the  result 
of  which,  in  the  modern  world  at  least,  is  dissatisfaction 
and  distress.  In  the  antique  world  we  are  apt  to  think 
it  may  not  have  been  so.  Heine,  for  example,  con- 
ceived that  it  was  not  so,  and  the  tragic  result  of  this 
belief  in  his  own  case  does  not  refute  the  many  true 
and  searching  things  he  said  in  support  of  it.  "  The 
ideal,  cheerful,  sensuous,  pagan  life  is  not  sick  or  sorry," 
says  Matthew  Arnold,  writing  of  Theocritus.  Of  the 
real  pagan  life,  however,  one  may  find  the  witness  of 
the  ideal  idyllist  less  illuminating  than  the  graver  lit- 
erature from  ^schylus  to  Juvenal.  And  whatever  it 
was,  it  is  over.  Evolution  alone  has  fixed  our  status 
The  purely  sensuous  ideal,  if  it  ever  practically  existed, 
is  irrevocably  submerged.  The  tyranny  of  conscience 
has  perhaps  also  passed  its  apogee.  When  Mr.  James, 
for  example,  concludes  his  Hfe  of  Hawthorne  with  the 
words  "  Man's  conscience  was  his  theme,  but  he  saw  it 
in  the  light  of  a  creative  fancy  which  added  out  of  its 

95 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

own  substance  an  interest  and  I  may  almost  say  an  im- 
portance," the  modern  reader  is  quite  in  agreement 
with  him.  But  conscience  long  since  won  its  perma- 
nent place  in  the  domain  of  the  common  consciousness 
of  mankind.  It  has  not  been  exorcised  in  its  rationali- 
zation. And  the  status  it  imposes  is  recognized  by 
consciousness  as  the  prize  of  constant  effort.  What 
greater  service  than  the  stimulation  of  this  effort  is  it 
open  to  literature  to  render  to  humanity  ?  one  feels  like 
asking  in  the  presence  of  Carlyle's  massive  contribution 
to  what  he  himself  loftily  defines  as  "  the  Thought  of 
Thinking  Souls."  Only  one,  perhaps ;  that  of  lighten- 
ing it  as  well. 


96 


GEOEGE  ELIOT 


GEOEGE  ELIOT 


How  long  is  it  since  George  Eliot's  name  has  been 
the  subject  of  even  a  literary  allusion  ?  What  has 
become  of  a  vogue  that  only  yesterday,  it  seems,  was 
so  great  ?  Of  course,  every  day  has  its  own  fiction — 
even  ours,  such  as  it  is.  But  this  does  not  exclude 
popular  interest  in  august  survival — Thackeray,  Dick- 
ens, Jane  Austen,  Eeade,  Trollope,  Charlotte  Bronte, 
every  one  but  Bulwer  and  George  Eliot,  I  should  say. 
As  to  Bulwer,  perhaps,  speculation  would  be  surplus- 
age. The  neglect,  however,  into  which  so  little  neg- 
ligible a  writer  as  George  Eliot  has  indubitably  fallen 
is  one  of  the  most  curious  of  current  literary  phenom- 
ena, and  an  interesting  one  to  consider,  since  consider- 
ing it  involves  also  a  consideration  at  the  same  time 
of  the  remarkable  genius  that  is  the  subject  of  it.  It 
is  probably  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  from  a  purely 
intellectual  point  of  view  people,  in  books  or  out  of 
them,  are  both  less  interesting  and  less  idiosyncratic 
than  we  were  wont  to  suppose  when  George  EHot's 
fame  was  at  its  height. 

The  novelty  of  psychological  fiction  was  a  powerful 
99 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

source  of  attraction,  in  the  first  place.  For  any  such 
fiction  as  hers,  which  keeps  one  actively  thinking  not 
only  some  but  all  of  the  time,  the  stimulus  of  novelty 
is  requisite,  because  only  under  such  stimulus  does  the 
mind  experience  the  zest  that  alone  sustains  the 
needed  alertness  of  appreciation.  In  the  second  place, 
its  ex  vi  termini  superiority — surely^  no  stuff  of  fiction 
could  have  the  dignity  and  the  significance  of  the  hu- 
man mindir— gave  it  ^^  irrefutable  claim  on  our 
esteem.  (The  novelty  has  disappeared.  We  have  had 
a  surfeit  of  psychological  fiction  since  George  Eliot's 
day.  Psychology,  too,  has  entered  as  an  element  into 
almost  every  other  variety  of  fiction.  Jv  And  the  gla- 
mour of  novelty  gone,  we  have  been  able  to  discern. 
the  defects,  once  obscured  by  the  qualities,  of  the 
purely  intellectual  element  of  fiction  when  it  wholly 
overshadows  all  others.  We  now  recognize  that 
science  had  invaded  the  domain  of  literature — dona 
ferens  and  undistrusted.  The  current  reaction,  started 
perhaps,  exemplified  certainly,  by  Stevenson^ the 
significance  of  whose  work  is  purely  "literary" — is  so 
great  as  to  have  sacrificed  seriousness  along  with 
science.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  exalt  the  puerile 
in  order  to  establish  the  insufficiency  of  the  pedantic. 
And  to  pedantry,  however  obscurely  felt  or  uncon- 
sciously manifested,  disproportionate  preoccupation 
with  the  intellectual  element  in  fiction  is  apt,  popu- 
larly, to  be  ascribed. 


100 


GEORGE  ELIOT 


II 


George  Eliot   certainly  stands  at  the   head   of 
psychological   novelists,   and  though  within  far  nar- 
rower limits  she  has  here  and  there  been  equalled  — 
by  Mr.  Hardy,  for  example ;  and  in  highly  differenti- 
ated types,  in  the  subtleties  and  nitances  of  the  genre 
by  Mr.  Henry  James — it  is  probable  that  the  genre 
itself  will  decay  before  any  of  its  practitioners  will, 
either  in  depth  or  range,  surpass  its  master  spirit.     As 
George  Eliot  herself  remarks,  "  Of  all  forms  of  mistake, 
propliecy  is  the  most  gratuitous  "  ;  but  we  may  conjec- 
ture that  the  psychological  novel,  in  its  present  ex- 
plicit sense,  will  disappear  before  her  own  pre-emi- 
nence in  the  writing  of  it  is  successfully  challenged. 
She  is,  thus,  and  is  likely  to  remain,  a  unique  figure. 
More  than  any  other  writer's  her  characters  have — and! 
for  the  serious  readers  of  the  future  will  continue  to 
have — the  specifically  intellectual  interest.     This  in-  j 
terest,   indeed,    is    so   marked  in   them    that   one  isf 
tempted  to  call  it  the  only  one  they  possess.     Wliat; 
goes  on  in  their  minds  is  almost  the  sole  concern  of  i 
their   creator.     Our   attention   is   so  concentrated  odi. 
what  they  think  that  we  hardly  know  how  they  feel» 
QT^  whether — in  many  cases,  at  least,  where  we  never- 
theless have  a  complete  inventory  of  their  mental  fur- 
niture— they  feel  at  all.     They  are  themselves  also 
prodigiously    interested    in    their    mental    processes. 
They  do  a  tremendous  lot  of  thinking.     In  any  emer- 

101 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

gency  or  crisis  their  minds  fairly  buzz,  like  a  wound 
clock  with  the  pendulum  removed.  We  assist  at  the 
spectacle  of  a  cogitation  that  seems  to  be  pursued  by 
the  thinkers  themselves  with  disinterested  devotion. 
At  all  events,  the  stars  of  the  company  not  only  prac- 
tise but  enjoy  mental  exercise  to  an  extent  not  else- 
where to  be  met  with. 

I  have  heard  it  remarked  in  qualification  of  the 
legitimate  interest  of  Thackeray's  characters,  that  they 
"  never  seem  to  have  any  fun  with  their  minds,"  and 
it  is  certainly  true  that  in  the  concert  of  powers  of 
which  the  nature  of  Thackeray's  personages  is  com- 
posed, the  mind  does  not  hold  a  notable  hegemony.  The 
personages  themselves  are  rarely  either  introspective  or 
mentally  energetic  for  pure  love  of  the  exercise.  But 
the  drama  itself  of  George  Eliot's  world  is  largely  an 
intellectual  affair  The  soul,  the  temperament,  the  heart 
— in  the  scriptural  sense — the  whole  nature,  plays  a 
subordinate  part.  The  plot  turns  on  what  the  charac- 
'  ters  think.  The  characters  are  individualized  by  their 
mental  complexions ;  their  evolution  is  a  mental  one ; 
'  they  change,  develop,  deteriorate,  in  consequence  of  see- 
(  ing  things^ifferently.  Their  troubles  are  largely  mental 
perplexities  j  in  her  agony  of  soul  Romola  goes  to  Savon- 
arola and  Gwendolen  to  Deronda  for  light,  not  heat. 
The  prescriptions  they  receive  are  also  terribly  ex- 
plicit —  addressed  quite  exclusively  to  the  reason,  and 
wholly  unlike  that  obtained  by  Nicodemus  "  by  night." 
The  courtship  of  Esther  and  Felix  Holt  is  mainly  an 

102 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

interchange  of  "  views."  There  are  exceptions  —  nota- 
bly Maggie  TuUiver  and  Dorothea,  the  two  characters 
which  have  been  called — with  ample  reason,  one  may 
guess — autobiographic.  But  the  exceptions  accentuate 
the  rule.  As  a  rule  the  atmosphere  of  each  novel  is 
saturated  with  thought.  Certainly  nowhere  else  in 
fiction  is  there  any  such  apotheosis  of  intellect,  both 
express  and  implied. 

Yet  it  is  the  temperament,  not  the  thinking,  of] 
men  and  women  that  is  permanently  and  rewardinglyj 
interesting  in  that  field  of  literature  which  fiction  con-J 
stitutes.  Sociology  rather  than  psychology  is  its  aux- 
iliary science — because,  no  doubt,  sociology  is  hardl}! 
to  be  called  a  science  at  all.  Thought  is  a  universar, 
and  automatic  process  compared  with  feeling,  than 
which  it  is  far  less  idiosyncratic  and  particular.  It  is 
comparatively  impersonal.  It  does  not  distinguish  in- 
dividuals with  any  very  salient  sharpness.  Other 
things  being  equal — which,  perhaps,  they  rarely  are, 
but  that  is  nothing — people  think  very  much  alike. 
It  has  been  remarked  of  the  insufficiency  of  argument 
that  a  legislative  vote  was  never  changed  by  a  speech. 
The  mind  is  far  less  recondite  than  is  generally  im- 
agined, except  in  so  far  as  it  is  complicated  by  feeling. 
Turgenieff  legitimately  complains  of  Zola  that  he  tells 
us  how  Gervaise  Coupeau  feels,  but  never  what  she 
thinks.  But  the  converse  exclusiveness  is  a  greater 
defect.  Surely  the  characters  of  Turgenieff  himself 
that  remain  in  our  memory  are  those  whose  feelings 

103 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

lie  has  described  rather  than  those  whose  minds  he 
lias  exhibited  to  us.  "Wlio  knows  what  Gemma,  or  the 
Russian  Dido  in  "  Spring  Floods,"  thinks  ?  Or,  rather, 
we  know  what  they  tmtst  think  without  being  told  — 
their  thinking  being  clearly  a  mere  corollary  of  their 
feeling,  which  is  admirably  set  forth.  Why  is  Maggie 
TuUiver  such  a  definite  entity  to  us,  beside  Felix  Holt, 
for  example  ?  Because  she  feels  more  and  is  shown  to 
us  from  this  point  of  view.  Felix,  even,  would  have 
had  very  much  the  same  and  no  more  interest  for  us 
if  his  creator  had  furnished  him  with  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent stock  of  the  notions  in  which  he  is  so  rich.  Why 
is  Tom  Tulliver  not  so  interesting  a  character,  but,  be- 
ing profoundly  uninteresting  rather  from  any  but  a 
curious  standpoint,  so  characteristic  a  masterpiece  of 
George  Eliot's  genius  ?  Because  he  is  difTerentiated 
mentally,  almost  exclusively,  with  the  result  of  nearly 
complete  colorlessness — so  wholly  is  color  in  character 
a  matter  of  temperament — and  because  George  Eliot's 
intellectual  preoccupation  is  here,  therefore,  an  advan- 
tage and  not  a  limitation  in  the  work  of  characteriza- 
tion. She  has  not  made  Tom  interesting,  but  she  has 
made  his  lack  of  interest  real,  and  so  vividly  real  as  to 
be  profoundly  suggestive,  and  therefore  the  point  of  de- 
parture for  interesting  speculation  in  the  reflective  mind. 
Where  the  lack  of  temperament  is  not,  however, 
the  point  of  the  character  to  be  illustrated,  her  prac- 
■  tice  is  less  productive.  Her  major  premise,  that  all 
people  are  mentally  interesting,  is  seen  to  be  at  fault 

104 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

when  she  deals  with  personages  the  discrimination 
of  whose  intellectual  peculiarities  certainly  needs  to 
be  supplemented  by  a  consideration  of  that  side  of 
them  which  says,  "  I  myself  am  heaven  and  hell." 
The  soul  is  always  interesting — in  its  traits,  its  poten- 
tialities, its  mystery  —  whatever  its  incarnation.  It  is 
permitted  us  to  believe — but  even  if  theretofore  the 
statement  had  been  a  supercilious  supposition,  George 
Eliot  would  have  demonstrated  its  soundness — that 
there  are  numbers  of  our  fellow-creatures  whose  minds 
hardly  repay  study.  How  many  pages  of  "Middle-I 
march" — that  encyclopaedic  panorama  of  the  provincial 
human  mind — are  there  devoted  to  the  meeting  of 
hospital  trustees  to  elect  a  chaplain  ?  Who  remembers 
the  outcome,  even  if,  indeed,  he  remembers  that  the 
contest  was  between  a  Church  clergyman  and  a  dissent- 
ing minister  ?  But  who,  that  remembers  the  incident 
at  all,  does  not  recall  how  completely  the  mental 
equipment  and  processes  of  each  of  the  mainly  insig- 
nificant members  of  the  board  are  exposed  and  docu- 
mented? And  with  what  result?  Chiefly,  I  think,, 
that  of  leading  one  to  inquire,  "Why  ?" 

Ill 

One  consequence  of  this  intellectual  preoccupation 
and  point  of  view  is  incontestable :  whatever  one's  pre- 
dilections, one  cannot  gainsay  that  it  is  fatal  to  action. 
In  George  Eliot's  world  nothing  ever  happens,  one  is 

105 


VICTORIAN   PRtSE  MASTERS 

/tempted  to  say ;  certainly  less,  very  much  less,  than  in 
I  the  world  of  any  other  writer  of  fiction  of  the  first  rank. 
Sometimes  nature  intervenes,  as  in  the  flood  of  "  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss."  Sometimes  there  is  a  catastrophe 
of  a  human  but  impersonal  order,  as  in  "  Komola." 
[  Nothing  dramatic  is  evolved  out  of  the  action  that  is  a 
resultant  of  the  forces  of  character,  for  of  these  forces 
the  intellectual  only  and  not  the  passional  have  been 
elaborately  dealt  with.  The  infanticide  in  "  Adam 
Bede  "  is  a  barely  concrete  excuse  for  the  structure  of 
moral  analysis  erected  upon  it.  The  intensest  incident 
inspired  by  love  —  before  George  Eliot  certainly  a  not 
neglected  element  of  fiction — is  the  kissing  of  Maggie's 
arm  by  Stephen  Guest;  though  the  tragedy  of  tliis 
book  is  too  splendid  to  suffer  from  any  limitation.  Mr. 
Frederic  Myers  notes  that  the  only  love-letter  in  all  the 
novels  was  wTitten  by  Mr.  Casaubon.  There  are  whole 
chapters  of  mental  analysis  leading  up  to  Dorothea's 
marriage,  but  the  marriage  itself  takes  place  off  the 
stage  and  is  chronicled  in  a  line.  Nothing  is  more 
characteristic  than  the  way  in  which  the  catastrophe  of 
"  Daniel  Deronda  "  is  treated.  George  Eliot  leaves  the 
telling  of  it  entirely  to  Gwendolen.  Any  one  interested 
in  the  fate  of  Grandcourt  (perhaps  he  is  not  quite  "  con- 
vincing "  enough  to  be  popular)  would  resent  the  abrupt- 
ness of  his  drowning,  his  sudden  disappearance  from  the 
face  of  the  earth,  his  demise  only  to  be  described  later 
as  material  for  casuistry. 

It  is  undoubtedly  partly  true  that  George   EUot 
106 


(SEORGE  ELI®T 

shrank  instinctively  from  the  melodramatic.  "  At  this 
stage  of  the  world  if  a  man  wants  to  be  taken  seriously 
he  must  keep  clear  of  melodrama,"  she  makes  Deronda 
observe.  She  certainly  wanted  to  be  taken  seriously, 
and  she  certainly  has  been ;  even  solemnly.  But  her 
instinctive  feeling  in  this  respect  was  greatly  reinforced 
by  her  practice  of  hmiting  the  field  of  her  fiction  as  she 
did.  The  drama  with  which  she  was  concerned  wasj 
the  interior  drama,Cthe  successive  mental  changes 
whereby  a  person  gradually  attains  his  or  her  develop- 
ment ;  and  to  this  anything  like  elaborateness  or  com- 
plication of  plot,  any  narrative  of  events  or  record  of 
incidents  which  play  so  important  a  part  in  fiction,  even 
when  they  are  merely  the  background  that  sets  off  the 
characters  concerned  in  them,  seems  inapposite.  Her 
themes  are  in  general  so  high  and  her  treatment  so  j 
serious,  the  moral  so  inevitable,  so  like  the  moral  of  life  ' 
itself— the  Hfe  and  reahty  of  which  any  book  of  hers 
is  the  equivalent  in  literature— that  even  tragedy," 
where  she  employs  it,  seems  a  little  artificial,  a 
little  contrived  and  arranged,  a  concession  perhaps  to 
precedent,  an  expedient  at  best,  less  typical  at  all  events 
than  the  moral  it  enforces  and  decidedly  inferior  to  it 
in  reality,  in  convincing  illusion.  Indeed,  where  her 
practice  did  not  exclude  it  altogether,  her  tragedy  itself 
comes  very  near  the  confines  of  melodrama,  from  which 
her  instinctive  repugnance  does  not  save  her,  and  which 
she  would  probably  have  handled  better  but  for  her 
predetermined  consecration  to  the  undramatic  and  phil- 

1«7 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  ALA^STERS 

osophical.  One  need  mention  in  illustration  only  "  The 
Spanisli  Gypsy,"  in  which  melodrama  abounds  —  though 
melodrama,  it  is  true,  of  the  mildest-mannered  kind 
that  ever  flourislied  on  the  banks  of  the  Guadalquivir 
or  arrayed  itself  in  Andalusian  vesture.  But  there  is  a 
tincture  of  melodrama  even  in  such  a  tragedy  as  the 
end  of  "  Eomola."  Imagine  even  Zola,  who  is  none  too 
scrupulous  in  such  a  situation  but  who  "  understands 
liimself "  admirably  in  it,  resorting  to  the  "  poetic  jus- 
tice "  of  Baldasarre's  final  reunion  with  Tito  in  the  death- 
grapple  in  the  Arno.  The  whole  Baldasarre  part  of  the 
book,  indeed,  is  melodrama,  and  the  least  successful  of 
the  motives  of  the  story.  The  Hawthornesque  incident 
of  the  secret  panel  in  "  Daniel  Deronda,"  which  when 
moved  disclosed  the  dead  face  adumbrating  the  tragedy 
of  Grandcourt's  death,  is  melodrama,  albeit  of  an  awk- 
wardness that  shows  a  flagging  fancy  and  a  tired  hand. 
In  short  it  cannot  be  said  that  George  Eliot's  true 
theme — the  constitution  and  development  of  the  human 
mind  and  its  effect  on  the  conduct  and  character  of  the 
soul,  its  subject — either  receives,  or  especially  needs 
perhaps,  the  aid  of  action,  of  the  dramatic  element, 
upon  which  nevertheless  a  very  considerable  part  of 
the  general  interest  in  fiction  depends. 

IV 

'       An  analogous  but  more  important  trait  is  the  lack 
of  creative  imagination  that  is  implied,  as  the  lack  of 

108 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

action  is  involved,  in  the  scientific  turn  of  her  genius.  ^ 
Whatever  dramatic  demands  upon  a  noveHst's  characters  ■ 
one  may  forego,  the  vivid  and  enduring  interest  of  the  , 
characters  themselves  requires  an  imaginative  differen-  ' 
tiation.     Otherwise  they  lose  in  concrete  effect  very 
much  in  proportion  to  their  abstract  interest,  which  in 
George  Eliot's  characters  is  very  great.     And  it  is  thai  r 
concrete  effect  that,  in  any  work  of  art,  is  of  funda- 1 
mental  value.     George  Eliot's  world  is  certainly  less 
concrete  than  its  moral  inspiration^  which  is  often  as 
definite  as  a  proposition.     Her  characters  are  thus,  it  is 
true,  perfectly  typical  —  in  spite  of  the  extent  to  which 
they  are  psychologically  individualized.     And  this  con- 
stitutes for  them  a  family  distinction  of  importance. 
The  characters  of  no  other  novelist  are  discriminated  so 
nicely  at  the  same  time  that  they  have  also  a  clear  rep- 
resentative value.     They  occupy  a  middle  ground  in  I 
this  respect,  one  may  say,  between  the  personages  of 
Thackeray,  who  is  accused  latterly  of  having  no  psy- 1 
chology,  and  those  of  Hawthorne,  which,  as  Mr.  James] 
points  out,  are  never  tj^es.     This  is,  perhaps,  why  they 
are  so  rarely  our  companions,  our  intimates,  as  the 
characters  of  even  inferior  novelists  are,  though  I  im- 
agine the  reason  is  mainly  that  they  are  mentally  in- 
stead of  temperamentally  individualized,  and  that  it  is 
the  sense,  the  volitions  and  the  emotions  rather  than 
the  intellect  of  people  which,  in  fiction  as  in  life,  attach 
them  to  us  and  give  them  other  than  a  quasi-scientific 
interest  for  us.    And,  besides,  George  Eliot's  star  char- 

109 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

acters,  if  types,  are  apt  to  be  rare  types,  and,  from  that 
fact  also,  depend  largely  on  their  speculative  interest. 
"  Yet  surely,"  as  she  says  herself  (in  "  Janet's  Repent- 
ance "),  "  the  only  true  knowledge  of  our  fellow-man  is 
that  which  enables  us  to  feel  with  him,  which  gives  us 
a  fine  ear  for  the  heart-pulses  that  are  beating  under 
the  mere  clothes  of  circumstance  and  opinion."  We  do 
not,  I  think,  sufficiently  fed  with  George  Eliot's  per- 
sonages. They  have  too  much  a  speculative,  and  too 
little  an  imaginative,  origin  and  suggestion. 

It  is  for  this  reason,  perhaps,  more  than  any  other, 
that  one  can  hardly  claim  for  her  the  quahty  of  the 
"  born  novelist,"  in  the  integral,  exclusive,  and  felicitous 
I  sense  in  which  Thackeray  was  one.     Nevertheless,  it  is 
:  as  certainly  true  that  in  the  creation  of  character  her 
>  remarkable  gifts  were  at  their  best.     She  thought  about 
other  things,  to  be  sure,  when  this  was  the  matter  in 
hand,  and  did  this  less  well  in  consequence.     Moreover, 
she  did  other  things,  and  did  them  from  their  own 
point  of  view.     But  she  did  these  less  well  still  than 
the  worst  of  her  character-construction.     Whereas,  for 
example,  the  fact  that  she  wrote  "  The  Spanish  Gypsy  " 
at  all  attests  the  incompleteness  of  her  native  call  as  a 
■  novelist,  its  marked  inferiority  to  her  novels,  in  spite 
of  its  sincerity,  its  ambitiousness  and  its  notable  excel- 
lences, gives  a  certgi^^^relief^to_the  genuineness  of  her 
1  true_Yocaiion.     It  is  not  perhaps  to  say  very  much  to 
say  that  her  characters  are  her  own,  and  in  a  more  in- 
timate sense  than  that  of  their  family  likeness  to  which 

no 


GEORGE  ELIOT 


I  have  alluded.  No  one  else  could  have  created  them.! 
Xhey  have  no  fellows  outside  her  world.  Any  one  else* 
would  have  portrayed  the  same  types,  even,  very  differ- 
ently. But  this  is  so  eminently  true — so  much  truer 
than  it  is  of  some  novehsts  of  very  high  rank,  of  the 
romancers  in  general,  very  often,  surely — that  in  itself 
it  witnesses  the  harmony  with  which  her  genius  ex- 
pressed itself  in  fiction,  and  shows  why  she  wrote  novels 
better  than  she  wrote  anything  else.  Add  to  this  the  par- 
ticular quahty  of  her  genius  and  its  eminence,  and  the 
high  rank  of  her  fiction  is  deduced  as  the  third  term 
of  a  syllogism.  It  is  indeed  a  body  of  work  that  not 
only  is  of  the  first  order  but  that  stands  quite  by  itself. 
It  was  doubtless  in  thinking  mainly  of  George 
Eliot,  whose  aptest  pupil  he  was,  that  more  than  a 
score  of  years  ago  Mr.  Hardy  spoke  of  fiction  as  having 
"  taken  a  turn,  for  better  or  worse,  for  analyzing  rather 
than  depicting  character  and  emotion."  It  was  cer- 
tainly George  Eliot  who  more  than  any  other  practi- 
tioner gave  fiction  this  turn  —  a  turn  still  followed, 
with  whatever  modifications,  and  illustrated  in  all  seri- 
ous examples  of  the  art,  so  much  so  that  a  novel  with- 
out the  psychological  element  is  almost  as  much  of  a 
solecism  as  a  picture  with  a  conventional  chiaroscuro. 
Analyzing,  synthetizing  —  the  terms  do  not  matter 
much ;  in  any  mental  exercise  of  importance,  both  pro- 
cesses are  involved.  Nothing  could  be  more  systemati- 
cally synthetic  than  the  patient  way  in  which,  having 
arrived,  deductively,  no  doubt,  from  the  suggestions  of 

111 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

observation,  at  the  idea  of  a  character,  and  tlien  ana- 
lytically induced  the  traits  which  belong  to  it,  George 
Eliot  puts  these  together  in  orderly  demonstration  of 
the  validity  of  her  original  theorem.  This,  to  be  sure, 
relates  to  the  mental  process  of  the  artist  rather  than 
to  the  technic,  which  is  certainly  analytic  enough  in 
the  case  of  George  Eliot.  But  it  is  worth  while,  per- 
haps, in  accepting  Mr.  Hardy's  expression  as  practically 
adequate  enough  to  indicate  to  us  the  turn  in  fiction 
that  he  had  in  mind,  nevertheless  to  remember  that 
with  George  Eliot,  at  least,  analysis  has  no  t}Tannical 
preponderance  over  other  faculties  of  the  mind,  and 
that,  so  far  from  being  allowed  in  unchecked  monopoly 
to  unravel  its  material  into  uninteresting  and  unrelated 
shreds,  it  merely  co-operates  with  these  to  a  truly  crea- 
tive end.  A  character  of  George  Eliot  is  never  picked 
to  pieces,  in  a  word.  It  is  perfectly  coherent  and 
original  —  as  original  and  coherent  as  a  character  of 
Dickens,  for  example,  which  is  not  analyzed  at  all. 
It  is,  howerer;  not  the  product  of  the  imagination. 

jits  conception  —  let  us  say,  rather,  its  invention  —  is 

i  less  irresponsible  and  spontaneous  than  if  it  were ;  itself, 
therefore,  has,  on  the  whole,  less  vitality — less  reality, 

I  which  is  the  vitality  of  a  character  of  fiction.  It  is  the 
result  of  the  travail  of  the  mind,  the  incarnation  of  an 

-  idea,  not  the  image  of  a  vision.  Such  a  character  as 
Gwendolen  in  "  Daniel  Deronda  "  is  as  truly  a  creative 
as  if  she  were  not  also  a  critical  product,  but  it  is  clear 
that,  inductively  conceived,  she  is  deductively  deline- 

112 


qJ%^ 


GEORGE  ELIOT  Q^\U^' 

ated;  one  cannot  avoid  seeing  the  machinery,  so  to  say,  of 
the  author's  mind  throughout  the  process,  and  applying! 
to  it  the  terms  of  logic  rather  than  of  literature.     She  j^ 
is  an  essay,  with  illustrations]  on  the  egoistic  girl  to 
whom  her  own  personality  is  of  immense,  of  absorbing 
importance,  who  counts  wantonly  on  imposing  it,  and 
who  "  falls  on  dark  mountains  "  and  meets  with  infinite 
disaster,  in  thus  following  out  the  uncompromising  law 
of  her  development,  when  she  comes  in  contact  and  into 
conflict  with  the  crushing  forces  of  circumstance,  and 
finds  the  world  quite  other  than  her  pygmy  and  per- 
emptory conception  of  it  —  finds  it  not  only  not  ductile, 
but  pitilessly  despotic.     Nothing  could  be  finer  thanf 
such  an  idea,  nothing  more  interesting  than  the  essay,  j 
with  its  incarnating  illustration,  in  which  it  is  expressed.  [ 
The  defect  —  at  least  the  distinction  —  of  the  charac-' 
ter  is  that  the  idea  was  born  before,  and  conditions,  its  \ 
embodiment.     With  all  her  characterization,  therefore 
—  the  invariable  light  green  of  her  costume,  for  exam- 
ple, on  which  her   creator   leans  with   such   evident 
helplessness  —  Gwendolen  is  imperfectly  exteriorized. 
Always  in  exteriorization  George  Eliot's  touch  shows- 
less  zest  than  in  examination.     At  times  it  is  fatigued,j 
often  infelicitous,  and  now  and  then  grotesque ;  De- 
ronda's  mother,  with  her  orange  dress  and  black  lace 
and  bare  arms,  is  a  caricature,  a  mere  postulate  of  her 
profession  of  public  singer.     And  not  only  is  Gwendolen 
ineffectively  presented :  she  is  incompletely  realized  as 
an  individual,  in  virtue  of  her  creator's  absorption  in 

113 


I 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 


ner  typical  significance.  You  are  impressed  by  her 
interest  in  her  own  personahty  as  a  significant  moral 
trait,  but  you  are  more  interested  in  the  trait  than  in 
the  personality ;  the  personality  is  more  elusive,  not 
quite  varied  enough  ;  what  else  does  she  do,  think,  feel, 
say,  besides  explicitly  exhibit  egoism  ?  one  asks.  Like 
every  other  character  of  her  extraordinary  creator,  she 
is  thoroughly  in  character.  She  is  conceived  and  ex- 
hibited with  an  absolutely  informing  consistency,  and 
with  a  strictness  unusual  even  in  psychological  fiction. 
Mr.  Hardy,  for  instance  (such  stress  does  he  lay  on  the 
eivig  Weibliche),  makes  two  women,  whom  he  takes 
pains  to  show  as  of  the  most  disparate  organizations, 
do  the  same  thing  — -act  in  a  way  which  if  natural  to 
one  of  them,  would,  for  that  very  reason,  be  out  of 
character  in  the  other. 

But  consistency  is  not  only  not  completeness,  not 
fulness,  not  variety,  not  productive  of  special  interest 
and  pleasure :  it  is  a  decidedly  inferior  element  in  the 
production  of  illusion,  the  illusion  that  is  a  condition 
of  vitality  in  a  character  of  fiction.  Beside  unex- 
pectedness it  is,  in  this  regard,  of  no  merit  whatever. 
The  consistency  of  Bulstrode,  Tito,  Felix  Holt,  ends  by 
boring  us.  ^^ou  w^ant  a  personage  in  a  book  as  out  of 
it  to  act  in  a  way  that  you  cannot  everlastingly  prefigure. 
To  surprise  but  not  shock  expectant  intelligence  in- 
volves, however,  the  aid  of  the  creative  imagination.  ] 
And  we  have  only  to  turn  from  Gwendolen  to  Daniel 
Deronda  himself  to  realize  how  much  George  EHot's 

114 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

other  faculties  exceeded  her  imagination.  She  is  for 
once  unhampered  by  any  scientific  subscription  to  the 
'"laws  of  reality.  She  has  almost  with  gaite  de  coeur 
abandoned,  in  this  instance,  her  old  reliance  of  obser- 
vation aided  by  sympathetic  divination.  She  has  made 
Deronda  out  of  whole  cloth.  She  has  done  everything 
for  him,  and  spared  no  pains  to  make  him  attractive 
and  personal.  He  has  a  "  grand  face,"  though  a  young 
man ;  his  smile  is  occasional  and,  therefore,  "  the  re- 
verse of  the  continual  smile  that  discredits  all  expres- 
sion." He  is  just  what  she  wants  to  make  him  —  her 
imaginative  ideal.  He  is  no  more  real  than  Charlotte 
Bronte's  Eochester.  We  owe  him  entirely  to  his 
author's  creative  imagination.  The  result  is  aptly 
enough  implied  in  a  letter  written  —  obviously  in 
Scotch  —  by  Stevenson  to  a  reviewer  friend,  when  the 
book  came  out.  "  Did  you  —  I  forget,"  he  says,  "  did 
you  have  a  kick  at  the  stern  works  of  that  melancholy 
puppy  and  humbug,  Daniel  Deronda  himself?  the 
Prince  of  Prigs ;  the  literary  abomination  of  desolation 
in  the  way  of  manhood;  a  type  which  is  enough  to 
make  a  man  forswear  the  love  of  women,  if  that  is  how 
it  is  to  be  gained."  The  whole  structure  and  color  of 
the  book  indeed  (Gwendolen  and  her  affairs  apart)  may 
be  said  to  be  George  Eliot's  one  expHcit  imaginative 
flight  and  —  shall  we  say  therefore  ?  —  her  one  colossal 
failure. 

The  irresponsible  imagination  has  certainly  much  to 
answer  for  as  an  element  of  fiction  and  a  factor  in  its 

115 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

;■  composition.  But  at  the  present  day  it  is  plainly  super- 
fluous to  dwell  on  the  fact.  The  weight  of  current 
cflticism  is  altogether  against  it,  whatever  the  practice 
jof  the  hour.  And  not  only  in  fiction  but  in  pleistic  art 
the  errors  for  which  it  is  no  doubt  justly  held  responsi- 
ble have  come  to  wear  the  aspect  of  solecisms.  The 
application  of  a  realistic  standard  is  become  almost  in- 
stinctive. Wliat  is  imaginative  seems  imaginary,  and 
beauty  that  is  not  also  obviously  truth  has  lost  its  in- 
timate appeal.  There  are  signs  of  reaction,  and  no 
doubt  the  "image-making"  faculty  will  again  receive 
the  recognition  that  for  the  moment  more  or  less  ex- 
clusively rewards  the  observation  which  normally — 
and  notably  in  most  very  notable  works  of  art  —  has 
the  humbler  role  of  verification  and  correction.  And 
the  reason  is  that  creation  is  inconceivable  without  it. 
The  criticism  that  constructs  in  fancy  an  inherent  an- 
tagonism between  it  and  truth  is  bUnd  to  the  fact  that 
it  is  through  the  imagination  that  the  human  mind  ar- 
rives at  truth  as  well  as  at  error.  Discovery  is  ideally 
deduced ;  it  is  the  guerdon  of  hypothesis  —  without 
which,  in  the  field  of  art,  at  all  events,  the  mind  rests 
in  the  suspense  that  has  been  noted  as  a  mark  of  hys- 
teria. In  science,  not  less  than  in  art,  synthesis  is  an 
imaginative  process.  In  a  word,  the  truth-loving  scep- 
tic of  the  imagination  is  confuted  by  the  inevitable  pro- 
cedure of  the  mind,  and  must  admit  the  platitude  that 
to  see  that  a  thing  is  so  it  is  necessary  first  to  see  the 
thing.     In  all  art  worth  talking  about,  therefore,  the 

116 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

imagination  is  inevitably  present.     It  may  count  as  a  I 
feeble  or  as  a  powerful  force.     It  may  shine  by  the 
beauty,  by  the  truth  of  the  images  it  constructs  or 
evokes,  or  be  obscured  by  the  data  accumulated  for  its 
justification  by  diligent  induction.     But  empirical  scru-  / 
tiny  and  sharpness  of  perception  will  never  take  its  ■ 
place.     And   its  absence   means   an   artistic   vacuum. 
With  George  Eliot  it  certainly  counts  for  proportionally    ^ 
less  than  it  does  in  any  great  writer  of  fiction.     Of       ^ 
course  there  are  compensations,  as  I  have  endeavored 
to  indicate.     One  need  not  prefer  "  Monte  Cristo "  to 
"  Middlemarch." 

Apparently  in  this  respect  of  the  imagination,  as  in 
others,  she  did  not  herself  sufficiently  recognize  the 
genuineness  of  her  vocation  as  a  novelist.  At  all 
events  she  did  not  depend  on  it.  Yet  there  are 
characters  and  situations,  there  are  in  fact  whole 
novels,  among  her  works  which  show  that  it  would 
have  triumphantly  withstood  any  strain  she  might 
have  put  on  it.  "  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,"  the  "  Scenes 
of  Clerical  Life,"  show  what  her  genius  left  to  itself 
could,  unaided,  accomplish.  But  she  was  not  content 
to  leave  it  to  itself.  She  had  other  ambitions — am- 
bitions which  she  could  attain,  which  a  woman  with 
less  intellect  (there  have  been  none  with  more)  could 
not,  which  would  attract  less  a  man  of  equal  genius, 
which  the  very  circumstance  of  her  sex — given  her 
environment  on  the  one  hand  and  her  powers  on  the 
other — teased   her   toward   with  a  fatal   explicitness. 

117 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

"See  that  you  hold  yourself  fast  by  the  intellect," 
said  Emerson  in  a  famous  passage,  the  acme  of  his 
eloquence.  "  It  is  this  domineering  temper  of.  the 
sensual  world  that  creates  the  extreme  need  of  the 
priests  of  science ;  and  it  is'  the  office  and  right  of 
the  intellect  to  make  and  not  take  its  estimate." 
Never  was  this  ideal  more  enthusiastically  followed 
^""^  than  by  George  Eliot.  She  illustrates  it  even  a  little 
literally.  The  result  is  a  certain  dryness,  a  certain 
mechanical  effect  for  which  unimaginative  is  just  the 
.  epithet.  She  brought  her  mind  to  bear  on  everything, 
and  almost  ceremoniously,  so  to  say.  This  was  clearly 
enough  instinctive  with  her.  There  is  nothing  arti- 
ficial in  it.  And  this  saves  it  from  pedantry^  She 
was  intellectually  very  high-bred.  There  is  not  a  hint, 
a  shadow  of  vulgarity  in  any  of  her  books.  She  is  at 
home  with  the  very  best  and  has  no  inclination  for 
anything  else ;  she  has  no  moments  when  her  sense  for 
the  excellent  relaxes  and  sags  into  irresponsibility. 
Without  austerity  —  without  much  humor,  too,  surely, 
except  in  so  far  as  the  appreciation  implies  the  posses- 
sion of  it  —  she  is  aever  tempted  into  caricature.  She 
has  no  excess 'of'  high  spirits  thus  to  mislead  her,  but 
in  any  case  her  taste  is  a  sure  reliance.  Her  taste,  in- 
deed, is  the  part  of  her  intellectual  equipment  that  is 
I  perhaps  most  clearly  instinctive,  ^sthetically  con- 
sidered it  is  less  trustworthy,  but  in  the  intellectual 
sphere  —  where  taste  has  an  important  office  —  it 
shows  itself  a  certain  winnower  of  the  worth  while 

118 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

from  the  common.  If  at  need  it  tolerates  the  common- 
place, it  is  because  the  particular  cornmonplace  has_its 
^significance ;  and  if  it  is  a  little  eager  in  its  apprecia- 
tion of  the  significant  which  is  also  the  eccentric,  it  is 
because  it  is  easily  and  aristocratically  at  home  with 
eccentricity  itself.  It  is  absolutely — singularly — free 
from  display.  In  that  sense,  at  all  events,  she  was  not 
in  the  least  a  pedant.  Her  pedantry,  to  call  it  so,  was 
pedantry  in  the  sense  of  literalness — and  seen  as  such 
mainly  from  an  aesthetic  view-point.  Her  erudite, 
even  recondite,  air,  at  times,  is  perfectly  in  accord  with 
the  most  thorough-going  simplicity.  It  is  wholly 
natural.  A  sentence  incrusted  with  erudition  andl  > 
intricate  with  logical  involution  is  with  her  a  nativej  * 
and  unpretentious  expression.  Any  pedantry,  in  other 
words,  to  be  detected  in  her  writings  is  apt  to  be  a 
matter  of  form,  an  error  from  which  the  sesthetic  sense 
alone  (in  which  she  was  conspicuously  deficient),  and 
no  amount  of  intellect,  can  protect  one.  Even  if  now 
and  then  the  substance  is  as  flat  as  the  statement  is 
solemn,  it  is  never  tinctured  by  that  variety  of  medi- 
ocrity which  is  of  the  essence  of  pedantry  and  which 
we  know  as  vulgarity — there  is  not  ij  all  her  writings 
a  touch  or  a  trace  of  it,  as  I  have  said.  "All  her 
eagerness  for  acquirement,"  she  says  of  Dorothea,  "  lay 
within  that  full  current  of  sympathetic  motive  in  which 
her  ideas  and  impulses  were  habitually  swept  along. 
She  did  not  want  to  deck  herself  with  knowledge — to 
wear  it  loose  from  the  nerves  and  blood  that  fed  her 

119 


7 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

action."  That  is  very  nobly  said,  and  it  is  doubtless 
autobiographic.  But  did  ever  such  "eagerness  for 
acquirement"  as  that  of  Dorothea's  creator  character- 
ize any  other  novelist  of  her  calibre  ?  And^  erudition, 
however  triumphantly  assimilated,  aside,  the  sponta- 
neity that  vivifies  its  creations  is  of  a  different  order 
from  a  pure  exercise  of  the  intellect,  however  instinc- 
,tive.  And  this  spontaneity  she  may  be  said  to  have 
so  instinctively  alloyed  with  reflection,  so  transmuted 
by  thought,  that  often  she  seems  to  lack  it  altogether. 


Its  absence  is  particularly  apparent  in  her  style. 
One  may  speak  of  George  Eliot's  style  as  of  the  snakes 
in  Iceland.  She  has  no  style.  Her  substance  will  be 
preserved  for  "  the  next  ages  "  by  its  own  pungency  or 
not  at  all.  No  one  will  ever  read  her  for  the  sensuous 
pleasure  of  the  process.  She  is  a  notable  contradiction 
of  the  common  acceptation  of  Buffon's  "h  style  c'est 
Vhomine."  Her  very  marked  individuality  expresses 
itself  in  a  way  which  may  be  called  a  characteristic 
manner,  but  which  lacks  the  "  order  and  movement " 
that  Buffon  defined  style  to  be  when  he  was  defining 
it  instead  of  merely  saying  something  about  it.  In 
itself,  moreover,  this  is  not  often  a  felicitous  manner. 
It  is  inspired  by  the  wish  to  be  pointed,  to  be  complete, 
to  give  an  impeccable  equivalent  in  expression  for  the 
content  of  thought,  to  be  adequately  articulate.     In 

120 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

her  aim  at  exactness  she  neglects  even  energy.     Her 
statements  are  scientific,  but  never  even  rudimentarily 
rhetorical,  if  we  except  the  use  of  irony,  in  which  she— i 
was  sometimes  very  happy.    ^  modulation  she  never  \J 
seems  to  have  thought.  \  Any  element  of  periodic  qual- 
ity, of  rhythm,  of  recurrence,  of  alternation,  succession, 
inversion,  for  the  sake  of  effect,  decorating  instead  of 
merely   expressing   significance,   she  would  no  doubt  i 
have  eschewed  had  any  ever  occurred  to  her,  as  plainly  ' 
it  never  did.     Rhetoric  of  any  degree,  in  short,  prob- 
ably   seemed    to    her    meretricious     if  —  which    one 
doubts — she  ever  considered  it  at  all.     She,  was  the_ 
slave  of  the  meaning,  hypnotized  apparently  by  the 
sense,  and  deaf  to  the  sound,  of  what  she  wrote.     Her 
taste  was  noticeably  good  in  avoiding  the  pretentious, 
but  her  tact  was  insufficient  to  save  her  from  the  com- 
plicated and  the  awkward.     Her  puritan  predilections ' 
should  have  suggested  simplicity  to  her,  but  simplicity 
is  the  supreme  quality  which  she  not  only  wholly  lacks, 
but  never  even  strives  for ;  the  one  salient  characteris- 
tic of  her  style — of  her  manner  of  writing,  that  is  to  j 
say — is  its  complexity. 

Thus  there  are  no  "  passages,"  either  "  fine "  or  in 
any  way  sustained,  in  her  works ;  at  least  I  think  of 
none,  and  if  any  exist  I  suspect  they  are  put  into  the 
mouth  of  some  personage  with  whom  they  are  "  in 
character" — in  which  case  they  would  be  sure  to  be 
very  well  done  indeed.  Every  sentence  stands  by 
itself;   by  its   sententious  self,  therefore.     The  "wit 

121 


VICTOIIIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

nnd  wisdom  "  of  the  author  are  crystallized  in  phrases, 
not  distilled  in  lluid  diction.  Their  truth  strikes  us 
sharply,  penetrates  us  swiftly;  the  mind  tingles  agree- 
ably under  the  slight  shock,  instead  of  glowing  in  ex- 
pansive accord  and  dilating  with  gradual  conviction. 
Often  these  sentences  have  the  force,  the  ring,  of  prov- 
erbs— of  those  of  Solomon,  too,  rather  than  those  of 
Sancho  Panza.  Some  of  them,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
the  air  less  of  the  Sibyl  than  of  "  saws,"  and  suggest 
the  wiseacre  more  than  the  philosophic  moralist.  At 
times  they  have  the  trenchant  crispness  of  La  Rochefou- 
cauld; at  others,  even  in  the  novels,  the  unravelled 
looseness  premonitory  of  the  appalling  Theophrastus 
Such.  The  manner  naturally  takes  on  the  character 
of  the  substance,  and  we  have  thus  this  formal  senten- 
tiousness — now  epigrammatic,  as  I  say,  and  now  otiose 
and  obscure — because  of  the  writer's  exclusive  con- 
secration to  the  content,  which  itself  varies,  of  course, 
(from  the  pithy  to  the  commonplace.  Her  defective. 
'cGsthetic  feeling,  her  lack  indeed  of  the  aesthetic  sense, 
fnowhere  comes  out  more  clearly  than  in  this  absorption 
in  the  significance,  to  the  neglect  of  the  aspect,  of  the 
(picture  she  is  presenting.  '  This  picture,  and  even  the 
personages  who  people  it,  seem  to  have  for  her  at  least 
a  disproportionate  attraction  in  virtue  of  their  typical, 
to  the  exclusion  of  their  individual,  interest — sharply 
individualized  as  her  characters  are  in  the  matter  of 
psychology  alone.  She  seems  so  impressed  with  their 
universal   appeal   and  representative   office,  with  the 

122 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

principle  her  facts  illustrate  and  enforce,  with  the 
ulterior  meaning  and  value  of  her  "  criticism  of  life," 
as  to  have  at  all  events  distinctly  less  zest  in  depicting 
than  in  defining  her  material.  For  fiction  this  indubi- 
tably means  a  tame  style. 

Lacking  in  aesthetic  feeling  as  she  was,  she  was 
probably  more  or  less  conscious  of  this.  Her  attempts 
to  circumvent  it  are~nOw  and  then  deplorable.  They 
are  invariably  verbiage  of  one  kind  or  another.  The 
refuge  of  pedantry  in  its  endeavor  to  escape  dulness 
is  apt  to  be  sportiveness,  and  it  is  perhaps  when  she  is 
playful  that  George  Eliot  comes  nearer  pedantry  than 
at  any  other  time.  Even  in  moments  when  her  erudi- 
tion seems  elaborate  and  essentially  inapposite,  we  are 
always  conscious  that  it  does  not  seem  so  to  her,  and 
that  not  only  is  there  no  parade  about  it,  but  also 
neither  is  it  in  the  least  mechanical.  It  is  the  native, 
however  awkward,  expression  of  a  kind  of  tempered 
enthusiasm.  At  times,  certainly,  the  sense  of  humor 
failed  her  equally  with  the  aesthetic  sense,  of  which  in 
a  large — or  strict — sense  it  is,  of  course,  a  subdivision; 
and  the  artist  who  could  objectively  reproduce  such 
humor  as  that  of  "Adam  Bede"  and  "The  Mill  on  the 
Floss"  could  also,  when  it  came  to  self-expression, 
illustrate  the  very  acme  of  dulness.  Her  facetious- 
ness  is,  at  its  worst,  as  bad  as  Dickens's ;  and,  at  her  1 
worst,  she  writes  as  badly,  without  the  mitigation  of 
his  extraordinary  high  spirits  and  infectious  hilarity. 
Without,  too,  his  bad  taste,  though  with,  as  I  said,  the 

123 


0-^ 


y 

u- 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

tactlessness  which  is  the  next  thing  to  it.  The  moral 
element  in  taste  involves  self-respect.  And  in  any- 
thing moral  George  Eliot  is  never  deficient.  Her  intel- 
ligence saves  her ;  it  is  too  serious,  it  has  too  much 
poise,  and  it  sees  temptation  as  a  kind  of  sophistry  — 
temptation,  I  mean,  to  put  up  with  the  second  rate  on 
account  of  its  tinsel,  for  example.  But  the  tact  that 
shows  one  when  he  is  hitting  and  when  he  is  missing 
the  mark,  she  does  not  infallibly  possess,  and  often 
when,  apparently,  she  seems  to  herself  to  be  exhibiting 
the  light  touch,  she  is  bravely  ponderous.  With  a 
\  /  little  more  tact,  a  little  more  humor,  a  little  more 
(♦'  festhetic  sense,  some  of  her  significance  might  have 
been  even  more  striking,  and  certainly  some  of  it  would 
not  have  seemed  so  absolutely  flat. 

But  why  discuss  her  style  at  all,  one  asks  one's  self. 
No  one  can  have  any  doubt  that,  though,  in  general,  it 
serves  her  well  enough,  and  sometimes  expresses  ade- 
quately the  most  searching  subtleties  of  observation 
and  reflection,  nevertheless  its  idiosyncrasies  are  de- 
fects. And  of  style  in  any  large  sense  surely  no 
great  writer  ever  had  so  little.  Her  constant  refer- 
ences in  her  letters  to  her  "art"  have  an  odd  sound. 
Yet  even  here  one's  last  word  must  be  a  recognition  of 
the  extraordinary  way  in  which  her  intellect  atones  for 
sensuous  deficiencies.  Could  two  better  words  be 
found,  for  a  slight  example,  to  characterize  the  first 
impression  Rome  makes  on  the  stranger  than  "  stupen- 
dous fragmentariness  "  ?     One  of  her  characters,  "  like 

124 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

most  tyrannous  people,  had  that  dastardly  kind  of  self- 
restraint  which  enabled  him  to  control  his  temper 
where  it  suited  his  convenience  to  do  so."  The  adjec- 
tive is  felicity  itself.  And  in  her  letters  one  can  see 
how  safely  her  intelligence  guides  her  through  the 
museum  maze  of  plastic  art  for  which  she  had  so  little 
native  feeling,  but  in  which  less  than  many  an  aesthetic 
temperament  is  she  either  imposed  upon  or  unappre- 
ciative.  In  art,  as  in  life,  she  has  an  acute  sense,  if  not 
a  sensitive  feeling,  for  what  is  distinctly  worth  while. 


VI 

No  one,  however,  as  I  have  intimated,  would  infer  her 
personality  from  her  style — certainly  not  that  trait  of 
her  personality  which,  in  spite  of  her  apotheosis  of  the 
intellect,  distinguishes  her  from  the  so-called  intellect- 
ual woman,  and  which  I  take  to  be  intimately  charac- 
teristic. In  books  or  in  fact  the  first  impression  made 
by  the  so-called  intellectual  woman  is  that  of  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  intellect.  There  is  so  much  else  that 
is  admirable,  one  reflects  in  the  presence  of  such 
thorough-going  exclusions.  The  attractiveness  of  the 
susceptibility  and  even  the  will  is  thrown  into  effective 
relief.  Intuitions  seem  to  gain  a  new  sanction,  in- 
stinctiveness  a  new  charm,  spontaneity  a  new  grace, 
irresponsibility  a  new  excuse  —  qualities  intimately 
associated  with  women.  The  limitedness  of  the  intel- 
lect, the  distant  view  of  sympathetic  relations  —  fancy, 

125 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

unexpectedness,  clairvoyance,  all  lying  without  its  con- 
fines —  become  depressingly  plain.  One  naturally  reacts 
under  the  exaggerated  emphasis  of  importance  and  all- 
sufficiency  that  the  intellect  receives  from  the  intellect- 
ual woman  in  general,  whose  consecration  to  it  is  so 
complete,  so  obvious,  so  naively  unconscious  of  what 
exists  beyond  its  pale.  It  is  not  so  much  that  she  is 
too  intellectual.  At  times  one  finds  that  she  might  be 
even  more  so,  even  if  less  strictly  so,  with  advantage. 
'  It  is  that  she  seems  to  be  unaware  that  compared  with 
character  or  even  temperament  the  intellect  itself  is 
terribly  concrete  and  communicable.  And  perhaps 
there  is  nothing  that  sets  George  Eliot  ofif  from  those 
of  her  sex  for  whom  the  intellect  is  a  universal 
talisman,  so  much  as  the  circumstance  that  she  does 
not  make  this  impression.  On  the  contrary,  one's  im- 
pression is  of  the  plenary  power  and  sufficiency  of  the 
intellect  unaided  and  unillumined  ah  extra.  So  search- 
ing and  fruitful  are  its  processes  as  exhibited  in  her 
works ;  so  pregnant  are  the  discoveries  of  her  scrutiny 
and  reflection  in  the  heretofore  unexplored  regions  of 
human  character  and  moral  relations ;  so  pithy  are  her 
deductions ;  so  stimulant  is  her  turning  of  her  "  allow- 
ance of  knowledge  into  principles"  (as  she  says  of 
Dorothea),  that  one  feels  almost  that  other  faculties 
are  surplusage,  and  that  the  field  of  fiction  as  well  as 
that  of  science  belongs  to  the  intellect,  thus  shown  to 
be  capable  unaided  of  such  distinguished  results. 
Other  relations,  one   feels,   remain   to  be  discovered, 

126 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

other  principles  to  be  formulated,  other  mysteries  of 

thought   and  passion  and  conduct,  of  the  real  world 

and  the  correlative  ideal  one,   to  be  solved   by  this 

magic    divining-rod,    this   mighty   crystallizing   force. 

Partly  this  impression  is  produced  by  George  EUot's  ^^.v** 

superiority.      Intellect  enough  is  its  own  sanction  and  /  -^*^j         « 

imposes  itself.     But  partly  also  it  is  due  to  her  person-  j^^^^  ^j^ 

ahty,  to  a  temperamental  richness  of  nature,  that  for     '^ 

the  moment  imposes  on  us  even  her  own  attitude,  which 

is,  nevertheless,  that  of  the  fanatical  worshipper  at  the 

intellect's  shrine. 

How  early  her  complete  consecration  to  the  things 
of  the  mind  took  place  would  doubtless  have  been  dif- 
ficult for  herself  to  tell.  It  must,  hqwgver,  have,  been 
in  the^  nature  of  a  conversion.  She  was  doubtless 
always,  as  she  describes  Dorothea,  "ardent,  theoretic, 
and  intellectually  consequent,"  but  the  break  which 
/  she  made  with  her  early  traditions  and  beliefs  must 
/  have  been  in  the  nature  of  a  transformation  from  a 
j  nature  emotional  and  expansive  because  fundamentals 
are  settled,  into  one  in  which  scepticism  stimulates  in- 
quiry and  which,  therefore,  in  proportion  to  its  serious- 
ness, is  driven  to  aggrandize  the  intellect,  which  is  the 
instrument  of  inquiry.  This  change,  whether  or  no 
induced  by  her  acquaintance  with  the  sociologists  and 
positivists  whom  she  met  when  she  first  began  hterary 
work,  antedates  her  work  in  fiction,  which  fact  and  the 
fact  that  it  was  a  change  can  hardly  fail  to  account  for 
much  in  this  fiction.     It  is,  in  a  word,  the  work  of  a 

127 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

woman,  of  an  extraordinarily  intellectual  woman,  of  a 
woman  who  had  come  to  concentrate  her  interest  and 
effort  within  purely  intellectual  lines  after  a  spiritual 
experience  in  which  the  emotions  probably  played  a 
predominant  part.  Its  notable  complexity  is  hardly 
surprising. 

Her  environment  probably  accounts  for  the  evolu- 
tion of  her  genius.  Nothing  could  be  less  favorable  to 
the  harmonious  development  of  the  intellectual  side  of 
Mary  Ann  Evans,  one  would  say,  than  the  environment 
of  Mrs.  Lewes,  even  though  she  may  have  been  con- 
verted from  "  orthodoxy "  before  going  to  London  at 
all.  Science,  which  spared  Dorothea  and  never  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Maggie  Tulliver,  took  possession  of 
her.  Metaphysic,  philosophy,  sociology,  theology  en- 
thralled her  "  ardent,  theoretic,  and  intellectually  con- 
sequent "  nature.  Her  emotional  side,  which  one  may 
judge  not  only  from  early  accounts  but  from  the  very 
latest  was  wonderfully  sensitive  and  refined,  became 
forthwith  subordinated  instead  of  developed,  so  far  as 
regards  its  expression  in  her  very  objective  books.  She 
became,  even  in  the  intellectual  field,  almost  the  ideal 
non-conformist.  Other  points  of  view,  which  she  ap- 
preciated wonderfully,  she  appreciated  through  compre- 
hension rather  than  sympathy.  She  was  too  objective 
for  altruism  of  the  mind,  even.  Her  writings  are  al- 
most invariably  marked  by  elevation,  but  elevation  to 
which  there  is  no  lift.  Her  spirit  has  no  wings.  Her 
letters  show  her  stoicism  to  have  been  severely  ethical 

128 


,  fir.  GEORGE  ELIOT 

^  and  without  sentimental  alloy.  To  do.  good  to  others, 
to  look  at  the  practical  results  of  our  actions  and  not 
bother  about  how  we  feel  concerning  them,  is  very 
much  the  sum  of  her  credo.  Of  God,  Immortality,  \ 
Duty,  the  last  only  is  left  to  us,  Mr.  Myers  dolefully 
records  her  as  asseverating.  This  may  be  true,  of 
course,  but,  even  so,  to  be  preoccupied  with  its  truth 
must  inevitably  be  a  handicap  to  a  writer  of  imagina- 
tive fiction  —  God  and  immortality  connote  so  much 
ideality. 

Her  thinking  was  eclectic  and  shows  the  lack  of 
comradeship,  of  harmony  and  accord,  of  those  foster-  ^^ 
ing  influences  of  concert  under  which  thought  flowers 
in  luxuriant  spontaneity.  "  Our  duty  is  faithful  tradi- 
tion where  we  can  attain  it,"  she  makes  the  solemn 
Deronda  assert.  But  faithful  tradition  is  just  what  she  J 
did  not  attain — just  what  practically,  I  think,  she 
came  to  have  very  Httle  feeling  for.  She  wished  in- 
stead to  "prove  all  things,"  for  which  operation  she 
had  indeed  an  admirable  equipment,  but  in  which  she 
showed  too  exclusive  a  zest.  Tradition  at  all  events' 
never  dupes  her.  Nothing  amuses  her  more  than  —  in 
the  best  taste  always,  assuredly — to  expose  the  insub- 
stantiality  of  its  pretensions  on  just  occasion.  The  net  | 
result  of  her  mature  theory  and  practice  is  a  noble 
work  performed  for  truth,  somewhat  to  the  neglect  of' 
the  beautiful  and  the  good,  except  in  so  far  as  these 
benefit  indirectly  from  any  service  done  to  trutlij  Andl 
even  so  far  as  truth  itself  is  concerned,  though  we  get 

129 


r 


\ 


% 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

unexpected,  felicitous  and  cogent  glimpses  of  it  —  and 
what  is  more,  a  sense  that  its  deeps  are  both  inexhausti- 
ble and  infinitely  alluring  —  nevertheless  one  feels  that 
there  is  an  order  of  truth  itself  for  which  the  intellect 
alone  has  not  quite  the  test,  and  which  is  of  ovennas- 
teriug  significance,  though  it  can  only  be  imaginatively 
i  perceived.  "  II  faut  avoir  la  foi  et  ne  pas  croire,"  says 
Claude  Bernard.  All  dogma  quite  aside,  it  is  certain 
that  George  Eliot  once  possessed  what  we  know  (but 
do. not  understand)  as  "  faith,"  and  that  When  she  wrote 
her  novels  she  had  substituted  for,  instead  of  adding  to, 
it  the  sapient  scepticism  unveiling  illusions  that  is 
such  an  integral  element  of  her  fiction.  She  is  in  con- 
sequence more  nearly  unique ;  she  is  more  isolated ; 
but  she  is  also  less  authoritative  and  less  complete. 
There  is  therefore  an  atmosphere  of  cause  and  effect,  of 
fatalism,  of  insistent  and  predetermined  gloom  which 
pervades  her  books  and  which  is  hostile  to  the  variety 
pertinent  to  a  report  of  nature  that  is  round  and  full. 
In  this  way  her  microcosm  is  a  little  more  distorted 
than  perhaps  it  need  have  been,  but  for  her  conversion 
—  her  whole-souled  conversion  —  to  positivism. 

VII 

Would  she  have  done  better  to  have  followed  what 
I  take  to  have  been  her  native  bent  ?  Who  would  wish 
any  great  writer  different  ?  Who  would  take  the  risk  ? 
Yet  I  must  say  I  think  there  would  be  a  minimum  of 

130 


GEORGE  ELIOT 


risk  in  the  case  of  George  Eliot.  And  for  this  reason. 
Her  development  seems  to  me  to  have  proceeded  on 
lines  increasingly  inharmonious  with  her  native  endow- 
ment. Her  temperament  was  an  ardent  one,  yet  in- 
creasingly contained  instead  of  exercised.  Her  whole 
nature  was  tremulously  sensitive  to  impressions,  and  it 
constantly  steeled  itself  to  systematic  reflection.  Her\ 
,  faculty  of  observation  was  marvellous,  and  she  became 
i|C^  more  and  more  of  a  recluse  as  time  went  on.  She  ab' 
sorbed  altogether  the  best  part  of  her  material  —  that 
of  which  her  first  books  and  "  Middlemarch  "  are  com- 
posed —  before  she  began  to  write  at  all ;  afterward  her  ; 
material  was  necessarily  so  extraneously  attained  as  to 
be  by  comparison  factitious.  She  was,  if  not  pro- 
foundly, at  least  acutely,  religious,  and  she  became  a 
positivist.  Intimately  emotional,  avidly  exigent  of 
sympathy,  having  that  imperious  need  of  giving  one's 
self  which  assails  truly  independent  but  affectionate 
souls,  her  expression  steadily  grew  in  impassibility  and 
in  a  stoic  consideration  of  the  impersonal  as  the  highest 
good;  and  duty  to  others  —  to  the  community,  the 
world,  the  race  indeed  —  became  a  sort  of  refuge  for 
her  ideality.  When  one  thinks  of  her  early  years  and 
their  associations,  her  precocity  and  emotional  develop- 
ment, and  then  of  the  immense  spiritual  contrast  in- 
volved in  her  work  in  London,  her  union  with  Lewes, 
her  friendship  with  Mr.  Spencer,  her  emancipation,  if 
one  likes,  and  the  subsequent  seclusion  which  certainly 
had  its  ideal,  but  also  inevitably  its  artificial  side  — 

131 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

wlien  one  follows  the  evolution  of  her  genius  from  the 
earlier  books  through  "  llomola,"  "  Middlemarch,"  and 
"  Daniel  Deronda  "  to  "  Theophrastus  Such,"  getting 
gradually  further  away  from  her  native  substance  and 
quality,  and  ending  in  comparative  ineptitude,  one 
comprehends  her  marriage  and  surcease  from  activity. 
She  had  re-entered  regularity,  had  ceased  to  be  excep- 
tional and  "  attained  tradition  " —  in  the  words  I  have 
already  cited.  It  could  not  be  that  she  should  not  rest 
in  a  kind  of  peace  unattainable  through  conscious 
effort  and  intimately  grateful  after  a  life  of  intense 
mental  activity  further  stimulated  by  an  elevated  and 
really  ideal,  but  nevertheless  peculiar  position.  No- 
thing is  more  touching  than  Mr.  Cross's  account  —  of 
a  delicacy  in  itself  equivalent  to  poetry — of  her  last 
years.  She  had  done  her  work.  And  it  had  been 
done  during  a  sort  of  prolonged  excursion  into  the 
realm  of  science,  where  the  native  temperament  and 
genius,  that  might  otherwise  have  powerfully  modified 
the  product  of  an  extraordinary  intellect,  had  been  de- 
flected if  not  repressed. 

For  no  judgment  of  George  Eliot  can  be  discerning 
which  does  not  consider  the  vital  fact  that  she  was — 
even  in  a  degree  really  typical — a  woman.  She  be- 
longed to  the  subjective  sex,  and  is  the  most  objective 
of  novelists.  It  is  the  fashion  at  present  to  neglect  the 
distinction  of  sex  in  speaking  of  women,  and  pay  them 
the  compliment,  or  do  them  the  justice,  of  treating 
them  severally  as  individuals,  discriminated  merely  as 

132 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

men  are  discriminated.  Nevertheless  until  their  dis- 
tinction in  certain  fields  of  activity  is  as  much  a  matter 
of  course  as  that  of  men — until  there  are  no  more 
"  Women's  Buildings  "  at  world's  fairs,  for  example,  and 
the  propaganda  in  favor  of  the  sex  as  an  entity  ceases 
to  obscure  the  individual  standard  which  naturally 
tends  to  get  itself  established  if  let  alone -+- anything 
like  the  eminence  of  George  Eliot's  powers  wili  be  sin- 
gularized  because  of  the  possessor's  sex. ;  It  is — as  yet 
— generally  remarkable,  worthy  of  remark,  that  a 
woman  should  have  reached  such  a  height  of  accom- 
plishment. But  that  her  accomplishment  should  have 
been  in  the  field  of  thought  rather  than  in  that  of  feel- 
ing, and  so  splendidly  successful  in  this  field  as  almost 
to  have  originated  a  species  in  the  domain  of  fiction,  is 
specifically  the  notable  phenomenon  in  George  Eliot's 
case.  Why  is  she  so  unlike  George  Sand  and  Charlotte 
Bronte? — one  may  exclude  Jane  Austen,  in  thinking  of 
precedents,  as  exclusively  an  artist.  Is  it  because  of 
her  different  and  in  the  main  superior  mental  quality, 
and  the  greater  subordination  of  feeling  to  thought  in 
her  original  make-up?  Probably  not.  Whatever 
George  Eliot  became  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Mary 
Ann  Evans  was  a  woman  in  whom  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  sex  were  particularly  developed.  As  to  the  exist- 
ence of  such  idiosyncrasies  and  their  native,  elemental, 
and  possibly  ineradicable  character  George  EHot  herself 
never  had  any  doubts.  The  difference  between  the 
sexes  is  one  of  the  phenomena  that  compose  her  ma- 

133 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

terial.  Her  writings  are  full  of  man  considered  as 
man,  and  woman  as  woman.  She  has  widened  the 
sphere  of  woman's  interest  for  us,  but  has  not  obscured 
its  identity.  The  impartiality  of  her  view,  however, 
excludes  the  patronage  which  the  as  yet,  perhaps,  more 
susceptible  sex  is  as  yet  quick  to  feel,  and  her  caustic 
treatment  of  masculine  foibles  excuses  her  occasional 
dry  compassion  for  what  the  author  of  "Janet's  Ee- 
pentance  "  calls  "  poor  women's  hearts  ! " 

"  Poor  women's  hearts "  !  What  became  of  hers 
in  the  transition  from  Miss  Evans  to  George  Eliot 
through  Mrs.  Lewes  ?  one  cannot  help  speculating.  Its 
interests  certainly  grew  both  more  limited  and  less  con- 
crete— more  limited  in  the  sense  involved  in  her  iso- 
lation, her  concentration  of  feeling  within  the  smallest 
of  circles  and  her  absorption,  in  geometrically  increas- 
ing ratio,  in  the  things  of  the  mind ;  less  concrete  as 
her  ethics  took  on  more  and  more  a  humanitarian  color, 
and  the  good  of  society  in  general  became  the  main 
concern  of  her  speculative  meditation.  One  has  only 
to  imagine  Mr.  Casaubon  more  human,  less  a  pedant, 
more  a  real  scholar  and  minus  his  littlenesses,  to  divine 
that  Dorothea  might  have  developed  into  a  philosopher 
of  moment,  losing  in  the  process  the  edge  of  those  qual- 
ities that  render  her  so  sympathetic  to  Lydgate,  to 
Ladislaw  and  to  ourselves.  Had  she,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, written  novels,  they  might  easily,  like 
those  of  her  creator,  have  been  noteworthily  objective, 
and  have  missed  the  personal  charm  of  native  feminine 

134 


GEORGE  ELIOT  \ 

genius  which  is  now  so  conspicuously  characteristic  of 
her.  Had  George  Eliot  not  fallen  in  love  with  science ; 
had  not  her  feeling  for  the  world  of  her  girlhood 
atrophied  with  the  loss  of  faith  in  its  standards,  so  that 
she  got  more  and  more  domesticated  in  a  foreign  en- 
vironment, and  even  predisposed  to  exotic  themes,  sug- 
gested by  intellectual  and  acquired  rather  than  native 
and  sentimental  interests — "  Eomola,"  "  The  Spanish 
Gypsy,"  and  "  Daniel  Deronda,"  for  instance ;  had  she 
not  given  the  rein  to  her  curiosity  and  become  absorbed 
in  the  world  of  books,  of  literature  rather  than  its  raw 
material,  which  she  could  nevertheless  handle  to  such 
admirable  ends ;  [had  she  not,  as  it  were,  made  herself 
over  into  an  intelligent  force  from  being  a  person  with 
idiosyncrasies,  and  expressly  subordinated  the  suscepti- 
bility in  which,  not  only  as  a  woman,  but  as  an  in- 
dividual, she  was  so  strong,  to  the  more  purely  intel- 
lectual development  which  she  could  only  share  with 
so  many  masters,  we  should  have  had  works  of  un- 
doubtedly more  charm,  and,  such  was  the  native  force 
of  her  genius,  of  equal  power^  We  should  have  had, 
in  fine,  more  books  like  "The  Mill  on  the  Floss"; 
" Middlemarch "  would  have  been  more  condensed; 
"Felix  Holt"  would  have  been  dramatic;  we  should 
have  lost  "Eomola,"  perhaps,  but  we  should  have  es- 
caped "  Daniel  Deronda."  It  is  not  that,  as  is  so  often 
the  case  with  writers  who  study  significance  rather 
than  form,  her  early  books  are  superior  to  the  later 
because  the  sense  of  selection  is  more  acute  and  ex- 

135 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

elusions  more  rigorous  at  the  beginning  of  a  career 
than  at  its  apogee,  when  everything  that  occurs  to  the 
author  seems  to  him  for  that  reason  worth  saying. 
"They  are  superior  because,  unUke  the  later  ones,  they 
are  cast  within  the  lines  of  her  native  capacity,  because 
they  do  not  call  for  imaginative  power,  for  artistic  syn- 
thesis and  dramatic  vigor,  but  amply  illustrate  her 
sympathetic  feeling,  her  closeness  of  observation,  her 
faculty  for  loading  with  serious  significance  and  almost 
Ominous  suggestion  the  most  ordinary  and  unpreten-. 
tious  data  of  human  life  by  drawing  out  their  typical 
quality  at  the  same  time  that  they  are  psychologically 
difierentiated  in  a  way  to  make  them  extraordinarily 
individual  and  real.  "  Depend  upon  it,  my  dear  lady," 
she  says  in  her  first  story,  "  you  would  gain  unspeak- 
ably if  you  would  learn  with  me  to  see  some  of  the 
poetry  and  the  pathos,  the  tragedy  and  the  comedy, 
lying  in  the  experience  of  the  human  soul  that  looks 
out  through  dull  gray  eyes  and  that  speaks  in  a  voice 
of  quite  ordinary  tones."  That  is  George  Eliot's  truest 
note,  and  it  is  a  note  struck  by  no  one  else ;  we  have 
nowadays  plenty  of  fiction  woven  around  dull  gray 
eyes  and  voices  of  ordinary  tones,  but  the  experience 
of  the  human  soul  is  not  often  what  these  express.  It 
is  a  note  also  which  is  far  less  prominent  in  the  writer's 
later  novels,  the  novels  that  help  us  to  understand 
what  Mr.  George  Moore  means  by  saying  that  she 
"tried  to  write  hke  a  man."  One  feels  like  replying 
to  Mr.  Moore,  that  at  least  she  succeeded.    But  any  one 

136 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

who  agrees  with  me  in  dividing  her  hooks  into  two 
groups,  those  written  before  "  Eomola  "  and  those  writ- 
ten afterward,  will  hardly  find  it  fanciful  to  see  in  the 
former  a  native,  and  in  the  latter  an  acquired,  point  of 
view  and  manner  of  treatment.  When  one  considers 
the  potentialities  of  the  author  of  "The  Mill  on  the 
Floss" — a  work  in  which  passion  and  the  tumult  of 
the  soul  are  not  objectively  analyzed  but  sympatheti- 
cally portrayed  with  unsurpassed  vividness  and  elemen- 
tal power,  a  work  which  is  indisputably  one  of  the 
great  literary  epitomes  of  the  pathos  and  tragedy  of 
human  existence  —  it  is  hard  to  reconcile  one's  self  to 
the  evolution  in  which  temperament  disappeared  so 
completely  in  devotion  to  the  intellect  alone  as  to  re- 
sult in  the  jejune  artificiality  of  "  Daniel  Deronda." 

It  would  be  idle,  and  certainly  I  have  no  disposi- 
tion, to  belittle  the  value  of  the  literature  produced 
between  these  two  books.  "  Eomola  "  is  unique  in  its 
way,  and  has  hosts  of  admirers.  There  are  readers  to 
whom  it  introduced  the  Italian  Eenaissance,  who  in 
its  pages  first  read  of  Florence,  Savonarola,  the  Medici. 
There  are  scholars  who  shared  George  Ehot's  enthu- 
siasm for  "  the  City  by  the  Arno  "  and  "  the  wonderful 
fifteenth  century  "  so  cordially  as  to  credit  "  Eomola  " 
with  having  successfully  reproduced  a  moment  and  a 
milieu  which  they  were  only  too  grateful  to  have  re- 
called. Besides,  there  is  that  masterpiece  of  evolution,  jff 
the  character  of  Tito  Melema.  "  Felix  Holt "  contains 
at  least  the  lovable  Mr.  Lyon,  and  though  the  weari- 

137 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

some  wordiness  of  the  book  is  a  handicap  from  which 
it  will  always  suffer,  it  will  always  remain  a  highly  in- 
terpretative picture  of  a  momentous  epoch  in  English 
political  and  social  history — the  birth,  in  fact,  of  the 
modern  English  world  engendered  by  the  Reform  Bill. 
"  Middlemarch  "  any  one  can  praise.  It  is  probably  the 
"  favorite  novel "  of  most  "  intellectual "  readers  among 
us — at  least  those  who  are  old  enough  to  remember 
its  serial  appearance.  It  is,  indeed,  a  half-dozen  novels 
in  one.  Its  scale  is  cyclopaedic,  as  I  said,  and  it  is  the 
microcosm  of  a  community  rather  than  a  story  con- 
cerned with  a  unified  plot  and  set  of  characters.  And 
it  is  perhaps  the  writer's  fullest  expression  of  her  phi- 
losophy of  life. 

VIII 

It  is  these  books  and  "  Daniel  Deronda,"  rather  than 
the  earlier  "  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,"  "  Adam  Bede," 
"  Silas  Marner,"  and  "  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,"  however, 
which  determine  her  position  as  so  much  less  an  artist 
ithan  a  moralist.  She  is  in  truth  a  moralist,  and  a 
moralist  of  the  first  class.  I  do  not  of  course  mean  the 
sense  in  which  Fdnelon,  for  example,  or  Paley  is  a 
moralist.  Expressly  and  in  form  a  novelist  of  her  rank 
is  an  artist,  in  whose  work  the  moral  significance  is 
either  spontaneously  generated  or  incidentally  induced. 
But  essentially  and  spiritually  speaking,  George  Eliot, 
whatever  her  superficial  classification,  is  so  far  less  an 
artist  than  a  moralist  that  it  is  as  the  latter  that  she 

138 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

is  of  value  to  us  and  is  most  likely  to  appeal  to  the 
future.  It  is  as  a  moralist  that  she  is  a  real  contribu- 
tor to  literature,  that  she  is  at  her  best,  that  she  is  of 
the  first  class,  and  that,  among  novelists  at  least,  she  is, 
if  not  unrivalled,  at  all  events  unsurpassed.  No  such 
explicit  "  criticism  of  life "  as  hers  exists  in  fiction. 
Thackeray,  for  example,  is  a  moralist,  too.  He  was 
very  fond  of  his  office  of  "  week-day  preacher."  But 
he  is  a  moralist  not  only  because  his  picture  of  life  is/ 
so  true  and  vital,  but  in  virtue  of  moralizing,  of  com- 
menting on  his  story  and  his  characters,  drawing  out 
their  natural  suggestions,  weaving  around  them  a  webl 
of  artistic  embroidery,  eliciting  and  enforcing  the  lesson 
they  contain.  With  George  Eliot  the  story  and  char- 
acters themselves  are  conceived  as  examples  and  illus- 
trations of  the  moral  she  has  in  mind  to  begin  with, 
and  a  part  of  its  systematic  setting  forth.  The  moral 
is  her  first  concern.  Her  characters  are  concrete — re- 
markably concrete  —  expressions  of  pure  abstractions, 
not  images.  Arthur  Pendennis  is  the  result  of  an* 
attempt  to  depict  the  average  man  of  his  day  and; 
station.  Tito  Melema  incarnates  the  idea  that  shrink- 
ing from  the  unpleasant  is  subtly  and  tragically  de- 
moralizing. There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  which  is  the 
creation  of  the  more  specific  and  unalloyed  moralist. 
George  Eliot's  "  moralizing  "  is  always  a  sort  of  logical 
coda  or  corollary  of  the  moral  idea  of  truth  which  her 
character  or  incident  happens  to  be  illustrating,  and 
is  never  the  artistic  moral  suggestion  of  the  subject. 

139 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

This  is  probably  why  it  is  tolerably  dull,  so  often.  It 
is  apt  but  inferred,  sound  but  not  spontaneous.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  not  in  her  obiter  that  her  success  as  a 
moralist  lies :  it  is  in  the  very  essence,  subject  and  at- 
tributes of  her  work. 

This  world  was  not  to  her  the  pure  spectacle  it  is 
to  the  pure  artist,  nor  even  the  profoundly  moving  and 
significant  spectacle  it  is  to  the  reflective  and  philo- 
sophic artist.  Its  phenomena  were  not  disjecta  membra 
to  be  impressionistically  reproduced  or  con^bined  in 
agreeable  and  interesting  syntheses.  They  were  data 
of  an  inexorable  moral  concatenation  of  which  it  in- 
terested her  to  divine  the  secret.  What  chiefly  she 
sought  in  them  was  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  the 
"  law  of  moral  fatality  informing  and  connecting  them. 
Since  the  time  of  the  Greek  drama  this  law  has  never 
been  brought  out  more  eloquently,  more  cogently,  more 
inexorably  or  —  may  one  not  say,  thinking  of  Shake- 
speare ?  —  more  baldly.  But  at  the  same  time  she 
makes  human  responsibility  perfectly  plain.  No  atten- 
tive reader  can  hope  for  an  acquittal  at  her  hands  in 
virtue  of  being  the  plaything  of  destiny.  She  is  more 
than  mindful,  also,  of  the  futilities  as  well  as  the  trag- 
edies of  existence,  and,  indeed,  gives  them  a  tragic 
aspect.  "  Middlemarch,"  for  example,  read  in  the  light 
—  the  sombre  light  —  of  its  preface,  is  a  striking  show- 
ing of  her  penetration  into  the  recesses  of  the  common- 
place, and  of  the  else  undiscovered  deeps  which  there 
reward  her  subtlety ;  with  the  result,  too,  of  causing 

140 


GEORGE  ELIOT 

the  reader  to  reflect  on  infinity,  as  he  does  after  a  look 
through  the  telescope  or  microscope — an  effect  only  to 
be  produced  by  a  master.  But  in  neither  the  tragic 
nor  the  trifling  does  she  engage  the  freedom  of  the  in- 
dividual, and  if  she  shows  the  victim  in  the  toils  of 
fate,  she  shows  also  with  relentless  clearness  how  op- 
tionally he  got  there.  Her  central  thought  is  the  tre- 
mendous obligation  of  duty.  Duty  is  in  a  very  special 
way  to  her  "  the  law  of  human  life."  The  impossibility 
of  aypiding  it,  the  idleness  of  juggling  with  it,  the 
levity  of  expecting  with  impunity  to  neglect  it,  are  so 
many  facets  of  her  persistent  preoccupation.  The 
fatality  here  involved  she  states  and  enforces  on  every 
occasion.  "  Tito  was  experiencing,"  she  flashes  at  us, 
"  that  inexorable  law  of  human  souls  that  we  prepare 
ourselves  for  sudden  deeds  by  the  reiterated  choice  of 
good  or  evil  that  determines  character."  Transome's 
illusion,  she  says,  lay  in  his  "  trusting  in  his  own  skill 
to  shape  the  success  of  his  own  morrows,  ignorant  of 
what  many  yesterdays  had  determined  for  him  before- 
hand." The  "  note  "  appears  again  and  again.  It  is  a 
diapason  whose  slow  and  truly  solemn  vibrations,  com- 
municated to  their  own  meditations,  all  of  her  thought- 
ful readers  must  recall. 

Her  books  are  apt  to  close  in  gloom,  but  they  leave 
you  with  courage.  They  contain  the  tonic  of  stoicism ; 
and  no  one  can  be  ungrateful  to  stoicism  who  has  ex- 
perienced the  soundness  of  its  solace  in  dark  hours. 
At  the  same  time,  whatever  one's  personal  predilections 

141 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

in  such  a  matter,  one  must  admit  that  stoicism  itself 
has  experienced  the  vicissitude  of  evolution,  and  the 
modern  stoic  has,  ancestrally  at  least,  passed  through 
the  phase  of  Christianity.  It  would  be  the  part  of 
wisdom  not  to  forget  the  fact,  one  would  say — just  as 
it  is  to  yield  the  geocentric  conception  of  the  solar 
system,  without  too  much  recalcitrant  argumentation. 
"  The  sentences  of  Epictetus  are  fortifying  to  the  char- 
acter ;  the  sentences  of  Marcus  Aurelius  find  their  way 
to  the  soul,"  says  Arnold.  George  Eliot  is  a  modern 
Epictetus  —  Epictetus  plus,  of  course,  the  modem 
Weltschmerz.  One  would  compare  her  with  Marcus 
Aurelius  only  in  thinking  of  Arnold's  further  words 
about  him :  "  The  effusion  of  Christianity,  its  relieving 
tears,  its  happy  self-sacrifice,  were  the  very  element, 
one  feels,  for  which  his  soul  longed;  they  were  near 
him,  they  brushed  him,  he  touched  them,  he  passed 
them  by."  She,  too,  passed  them  by.  "Was  it  because 
her  girlhood  was  so  precocious  that  she  could  not  see 
the  forest  for  the  trees  of  ignoble  controversy  which  in 
post  Eeform  Bill  times  had  such  luxuriant  growth,  and 
for  which  she  had  such  sharp  eyes — times  she  herself 
deplores  as  "  days  when  opinion  has  got  far  ahead  of 
feeling,"  when  Dissent  had  a  "theoretic  basis,"  and 
polemical  discussion  abounded  ?  Was  it  because  she 
was  converted  by  Comte  and  satisfied  with  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's famous  "system" — having  largeness  enough,  by 
the  way,  to  harmonize  the  two  ?  At  all  events,  it  is 
certain  that  her  mature  philosophy  does  not  take  ac- 

142 


GEORGE  ELIOT 


count  of  the  miracle  of  grace.  As  a  moralist  this  is 
her  great  defect,  or  rather  deficiency.  That  subtle  \ 
dynamic  impulse  of  the  will  which  the  psychologists 
leave  the  theologians  to  describe  as  "  the  new  birth,"  | 
and  which,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  fills  a  tremendous  rolej 
in  the  drama  of  cause  and  effect,  she  makes  little  of.  I 
It  lay  natively  within  the  folds  of  her  sympathetic 
mind  in  earlier  years,  as  "  Janet's  Repentance,"  for  ex- 
ample, sufficiently  witnesses,  and  it  is  certainly  one 
of  the  most  familiar  of  phenomena.  We  may  knowi 
nothing  of  it,  empirically,  ourselves,  but  it  is  certainly 
as  common  as  any  other  moral  agency,  if  not  indeed 
more  common  than  all  others.  Moreover,  not  only  are 
its  energy  and  its  effects .  to  be  observed  in  others,  and 
in  all  ranks  of  the  intellectual  scale,  from  Philip's 
eunuch  to  Saul  of  Tarsus,  from  a  crowd  of  Moody  and 
Sankey  penitents  to  the  last  French  realistic  raffing, 
but  every  modern  consciousness  which  looks  deeply 
into  itself  discerns  therein  the  potentiality  of  it  —  a 
potentiality  definite  enough  to  be  at  least  a  demonstra- 
tion of  its  existence  elsewhere.  The  miracle  of  grace, 
in  a  word,  is  a  common  enough  and  prominent  enough 
factor  in  the  universal  moral  problem  to  reward  if  not 
exact  the  attention  of  the  artist  who  is  also  a  moralist, 
and  in  excluding  it  the  modern  stoic  exhibits  a  real 
limitation. 

Its  exclusion  from  the  consideration  of  so  eminent 
a  morahst  as  George  Eliot  is  undoubtedly  due  to  the 
lack  of  imagination  ^nd  the  predominance  of  intellect 

143    " 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

already  noted  in  her  genius  and  lier  practice.  It  is 
itself  closely  allied  with  mysticism,  no  doubt ;  it  be- 
longs, perhaps,  in  the  domain  of  mysticism.  And  to 
deal  with  the  mystic,  or  even  to  entertain  an  inclina- 
tion to  deal  with  it,  necessitates  the  possession  of  the 
imaginative  faculty  and  its  cordial,  unembarrassed, 
spontaneous  activity,  undeterred  by  fear  of  error  and 
unrestrained  by  backward  or  side  glances  at  the  quite 
otherwise  seductive  data  of  ascertained  truth.  There 
is  no  shade  of  mysticism  in  George  Eliot's  moral  phi- 
losophy, whose  tenets  and  whose  logic  proceed  from 
the  processes  of  the  mind  and  have  little  relation  with 
"  the  vision  "  without  which,  says  the  wise  man,  "  the 
people  perish."  Everytliing  is  taken  on  the  side  of  it 
that  appeals  to  the  intelligence.  Gwendolen  comes  to 
grief  because  she  does  not  realize  that  domination  is 
impracticable  —  because,  in  a  word,  of  intellectual 
blindness.  Grandcourt's  baseness  is  an  intellectual 
perversion,  not  a  sensuous  one.  The  story  of  Tito's 
mere  repugnance  to  what  is  unpleasant  becoming  at 
last  readiness  for  any  crime  is  the  story  of  a  moral  de- 
cline exhibited  in  a  succession  of  mental  phases.  Even 
error  is  a  kind  of  alienation  and  sin  essentially  a  mis- 
take. The  notion  of  "  dying  to  "  it  nowhere  appears  — 
I  do  not  mean  pro  forTna,  in  which  shape  perhaps  it  be- 
longs less  to  literature  than  to  dogma,  but  by  implica- 
tion. We  are  still  in  the  penumbra,  one  would  say,  of 
the  Old  Testament.  The  Tiatural  results  of  error,  the 
natural  and    integral  sanctions  of  morality  are  con- 

144 


l    '  GEORGE  ELIOT 

vmcingly,  refreshingly,  and  stimulatingly  considered 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  preternatural ;  but  the  natural 
content  of  religion  is  quite  neglected.  Here,  as  else- 
where, she  takes  the  scientific,  the  intellectual  view  of 
the  phenomena  which  compose  her  material,  and  with 
her  the  mind  in  this  field  excludes  the  soul  as  in  the 
field  of  art  it  does  the  imagination. 

But  with  whatever  hmitations,  her  position  as  a{ 
classic  is  doubtless  assured.  There  are  types  of  human 
character  of  which  she  has  fixed  the  image  in  striking 
individual  incarnation  for  all  time  ;  and^r  philosophy 
is  of  an  ethical  cogency  and  stimulant  veracity  that 
make  her  fiction  one  of  the  notablest  contributions  ever 
made  to  the  criticism  of  hfe.  It  is  none  the  less  true, 
to  be  sure,  that  her  survival  will  mean  the  surmount- 
ing of  such  obstacles  to  enduring  fame  as  a  limited 
imaginative  faculty,  a  defective  sense  of  art,  and  an 
inordinate  aggrandizement  of  the  purely  intellectual 
element  in  human  character,  v^hi^h  implies  an  imper- 
fect sense  of  the  completeness  of  human  nature  and  the 
comprehensiveness  of  human  life.  But  no  other  novel- 
ist gives  one  such  a  poignant,  sometimes  such  an  insup- 
portable, sense  that  life  is  immensely  serious,  and  no 
other,  in  consequence,  is  surer  of  being  read,  and  read 
indefinitely,  by  serious  readers. 


145 


MATTHEW  AENOLD 


MATTHEW  AENOLD 


How  different  in  a  critical  aspect  from  its  condition 
when  Arnold  began  to  write  is  the  England  of  our  day 
—  England  and  its  literary  dependency,  ourselves ! 
And  how  largely  the  difference  is  due  to  the  influence 
of  Arnold's  writings !  Thirty  years  ago  he  was  deemed 
a  dandy  and  a  dilettante  in  literature.  To-day  his  para- 
doxes are  become  accepted  commonplaces.  No  writer, 
probably,  ever  passed  so  quickly  from  unpopularity 
through  fame  to  comparative  neglect ;  and  this  not  be- 
cause he  illustrated  the  passing  phase  of  popular  thought 
and  feeling,  to  which  on  the  contrary  he  was  generally 
in  antagonism,  but  because  his  victory  over  phihstinism 
was  so  prompt  and  his  "  bruised  arms  "  were  so  soon 
"hung  up  for  monuments."  "Was  there  ever  a  time, 
one  asks  one's  self,  when  Anglo-Saxon  critical  taste 
was  truculent;  when  measure  and  restraint  were 
viewed  with  contempt,  and  mere  erudition  with  rever- 
ence; when  rhetoric  as  such  was  admired;  when  rod- 
omontade and  fustian  were  tolerated  nominis  umhra; 
when  "  curiosity  "  was  discountenanced  and  disinterest- 
edness despised;  when  poise,  good  temper,  politeness 

149 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

were  negligible ;  when  "  allowing  one's  consciousness 
to  play  freely"  was  a  meaningless  rather  than  a  trite 
phrase ;  when,  in  a  word,  Arnold's  various  deductions 
from  his  cardinal  tenet  of  the  value  of  culture  seemed 
insubstantial  and  trivial  ?  Yet  to  nine  out  of  every 
ten  of  its  comparatively  few  readers,  when  "  Essays  in 
Criticism  "  was  first  published,  such  a  phrase  as  "  How 
trenchant  that  is,  but  how  perfectly  unscrupulous," 
in  characterization  of  Mr.  Kinglake's  rhetoric,  was 
probably  a  complete  revelation.  There  is,  then,  we 
said  to  ourselves,  such  a  thing  as  rectitude  outside 
the  sphere  of  morals,  and  for  us  the  point  of  view 
itself  of  criticism  suddenly  shifted. 

Who  now,  except  in  wilful  indulgence,  enjoys  what 
used  to  be  admired  as  "  prose  poetry  "?  Yet  at  the  time  I 
speak  of  who  was  there  that  was  not  slightly  puzzled  by 
such  a  statement  as :  "  All  the  critic  could  possibly  sug- 
gest in  the  way  of  objection  would  be  perhaps  that  Mr. 
Euskin  is  there  trying  to  make  prose  do  more  than  it 
can  perfectly  do ;  that  what  he  is  there  attempting  he 
will  never,  except  in  poetry,  be  able  to  accomplish  to  his 
entire  satisfaction "  ?  Of  course,  our  practice  has  not 
made  the  same  progress  as  our  principles.  Practice  is 
largely  a  matter  of  temperament,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon 
temperament  a  pretty  constant  quantity.  But  what- 
ever our  practice,  our  standard  would  nowadays  con- 
form to  Arnold's  declaration  that  "  the  true  mode  of 
intellectual  action "  is  "  persuasion,  the  instilment  of 
conviction."     And  if  one   seeks   a  concrete  instance 

150 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

of  the  great  advance  made  in  English  critical  writing  in 
the  past  twenty-five  years,  mainly  through  the  agency 
of  that  culture  for  which  Arnold  was  always  contending 
and  in  whose  triumphs  he  is  surely  entitled  to  share,  a 
very  striking  one  is  furnished  by  the  contrast  between 
the  state  of  things  at  present  and  that  existing  when  he 
inquired,  "  Why  is  all  the  jourTieyman-work  of  literature, 
as  I  may  call  it,  so  much  worse  done  here  than  it  is  in 
France  ? " 

His  work,  in  short,  is  there  to  speak  for  itself.  The 
poor  have  the  gospel  of  culture  preached  to  them,  and 
his  phrases  are  now  at  the  end  of  every  current  pen. 
His  ambition  is  no  doubt  disclosed  in  the  happy  lot  he 
predicts  for  Joubert — "to  pass  with  scant  notice 
through  one's  own  generation,  but  to  be  singled  out 
and  preserved  by  the  very  iconoclasts  of  the  next,  then 
in  their  turn  by  those  of  the  next,  and  so,  like  the 
lamp  of  life  itself,  to  be  handed  on  from  one  generation 
to  another  in  safety."  But  his  fate  has  been  to  receive 
abundant  notice  from  his  own  generation.  Doubtless 
in  spite  of  having  been  perhaps  prematurely  dissem- 
inated he  will  be  preserved  and  handed  on  to  Bacon's 
"  next  ages."  There  is  certainly  enough  pollen  in  his 
essays  to  flower  successively  in  many  seasons  and  as 
long  as  the  considerations  to  which  he  consecrated  his 
powers  interest  readers  who  care  also  for  clear  and 
charming  and  truly  classic  prose.  But  what  I  wish  to 
point  out  is  that  he  has  already  received  a  large  share 
of  his  reward,  and  that  this  is  itself  proof  of  the  quality 

151 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

of  his  merit,  which  is  moral  as  well  as  critical  and 
poetic ;  that  this,  in  a  word,  designates  his  jiiche  in 
the  temple  of  the  classics.  To  have  one's  gospel  so 
promptly  accepted  demonstrates  that  it  has  been 
preaclied.  He  had,  in  a  word,  a  mission.  And  he 
has  fulfilled  it.  Falkland's  ideal,  he  said,  "conquers 
slowly,  but  it  conquers."  His  own  has,  at  least  as  an 
ideal,  conquered  already. 

II 

What  especially  singularizes  Arnold,  personally, 
among  the  writers  of  his  time  and  for  his  public  is 
that,  in  a  more  marked  and  definite  way  than  is  to  be 
said  of  any  of  them,  he  developed  his  nature  as  well  as 
directed  his  work  in  accordance  with  the  definite  ideal 
of  reason.  He  had  probably  little  disposition  origi- 
nally to  swerve  from  the  pursuit  of  this  ideal,  but  he 
made  of  it  an  aim  so  constant  and  so  conscious  as  to 
illustrate  it  mth  great  distinctness  in  his  life  as  weU  as 
in  his  writings.  The  pursuit  of  perfection  that  he 
preached  he  practised  with  equal  inveteracy.  But  in 
this  pursuit  he  sought  first  of  all  completeness  of  har- 
.monious  development,  and  to  the  Greek  he  added  the 
Christian  inspiration.  His  own  translation  of  the 
quality  celebrated  by  St.  Paul,  "  sweet  reasonableness," 
was  the  chief  trait  of  his  character — the  "  note,"  to  use 
the  expression  he  borrowed  from  Newman  and  popu- 
larized, of  his  personality.  His  reasonableness  was 
tinctured  with  feeling,  his  stoicism  was   human,  his 

152 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

temper  affectionate,  his  aim  benevolent,  and  his  man- 
ner gentle.  But  he  rarely  lost  the  poise  that  he  ad- 
vocated so  sedulously,  and  his  gentleness  for  being 
ingrained  failed  no  whit  in  vivacity  or  in  force.  The 
"  Saturday  Review"  furnished  him  some  amusement  once 
by  accusing  him  of  being  a  transcendentalist,  but  there 
was  nothing  of  transcendentalism  in  him.  He  was  par- 
ticularly hard-headed,  indeed,  and  the  invincible  opti- 
mism and'genersus  illusions  of  Emerson,  for  instance, 
seemed  to  him  irretrievably  insubstantial.  Professor 
Dowden,  whose  apology  for  Shelley  he  reviewed  rather 
drastically,  collects  from  his  "  Letters "  an  interesting 
series  of  judgments  of  his  eminent  contemporaries,  as 
follows  : 

Tennyson  is  "  not  a  great  and  powerful  spirit  in  any 
line  " ;  with  all  his  **  temperament  and  artistic  skill "  he  is 
"  deficient  in  intellectual  power."  Mrs.  Browning  is  "  hope- 
lessly confirmed  in  her  aberration  from  health,  nature, 
beauty,  and  truth."  Thackeray  is  '*  not,  to  my  thinking,  a 
great  writer."  The  mind  of  Charlotte  Bronte  "  contains 
nothing  but  hunger,  rebellion,  and  rage."  Froude  has 
"  very  sinister  ways  of  looking  at  history."  Freeman  is  "  an 
ardent,  learned,  and  honest  man,  but  he  is  a  ferocious 
pedant."  Stubbs  "is  not  ferocious,  but  not  without  his 
dash  of  pedantry."  Mr.  Hutton,  of  the  "  Spectator,"  has 
"  the  fault  of  seeing  so  very  far  into  a  millstone."  Bishop 
Wilberforce  has  a  **  tridy  emotional  spirit,"  but  "  no  real 
power  of  mind."  Carlyle  "  I  never  much  liked.  He  seemed 
to  me  to  be  'carrying  coals  to  Newcastle,'  as  our  proverb 

153 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

says ;  preaching  earnestness  to  a  nation  which  had  plenty  of 
it  by  nature."  Henry  Taylor  is  "  not  very  interesting ;  he 
talks  too  slow,  and  is  a  little  pompous."  Victor  Hugo  is 
not  to  be  taken  "  so  prodigiously  au  sen'eux "  as  Renan 
seems  to  take  him.  Swinburne  is  "  a  sort  of  pseudo-Shelley," 
with  a  "  fatal  habit  of  using  a  hundred  words  where  one 
would  suffice."  Seeley  is  lacking  in  lucidity.  Disraeli's 
speeches  are  "  heavy  pompous  pounding,"  and  Gladstone's  are 
"  emotional  verbiage."  Lord  Salisbury  is  a  "  dangerous  man, 
chiefly  from  want  of  any  fine  sense  and  experience  of  litera- 
ture and  its  beneficent  functions." 

These  judgments  publicly  expressed  might  savor  of 
censoriousness,  but  they  were  of  course  expressed  in  in- 
timate correspondence  and  therefore  show,  to  any  but 
the  censorious,  how  scrupulous  Arnold  was  in  his  dis- 
crimination, how  little  he  suffered  himself  to  be  im- 
posed upon  by  the  seductiveness  of  contemporary 
admirations,  so  powerful  to  any  but  an  instinctively 
critical  mind. 

The  "  Letters "  were  disappointing  to  readers  who 
perhaps  unwarrantably  looked  in  them  for  the  litera- 
ture which  he  limited  to  his  writings,  though  the  fact 
that  he  did  so  attests  the  precision,  almost  inconsistent 
with  spontaneity,  with  which  he  ordered  his  activities. 
The  "  Letters "  have  been  subjected  to  an  unknown 
quantity  of  editing,  but  it  is  evident  that  they  were 
adjusted  to  the  measure  of  his  correspondents'  capaci- 
ties and  not  expressive  of  his  own.  This,  nevertheless, 
is  a  circumstance  that  has  its  advantage  and  shows  a 

154 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

very  charming  side  of  him.  The  "  Letters "  leave  the 
impression  of  a  singularly  elevated  soul,  living  habitu- 
ally on  a  high  plane.  Spite  of  their  lack  of  accent  and 
incident  they  repay  more  than  one  reading,  for  this 
reason ;  and  they  bring  out  into  a  stronger  light  the 
qualities  deducible  from  his  works.  They  testify  hap- 
pily to  shortcomings  rather  than  defects. 

He  lacked  the  edge  at  least  of  the  aesthetic  faculty. 
In  Italy  he  was  preoccupied  with  botany  rather  than 
with  the  fine  arts,  and  though  it  is  perhaps  too  much 
to  ask  of  any  Englishman  that  in  any  environment  he 
should  forget  his  botany,  still  the  slight  impression  the 
artistic  wealth  of  Italy  seems  to  have  made  upon  him, 
judging  from  the  "  Letters,"  is  significant  of  a  sensuous 
side  well  under  control.  In  the  matter  of  art  he  specu- 
lated only ;  and  in  a  general  way,  after  the  fashion  of 
the  "Laocoon."  Nor  is  his  sense  of  humor  conspicu- 
ously spontaneous.  It  has  the  aptness  of  wit  even 
where  it  is  not,  as  is  generally  the  case  with  him,  dis- 
tinctly wit  rather  than  humor  at  all.  His  wit,  how- 
ever, is  distinguished.  It  seasoned  even — or  I  may  say, 
especially — his  controversy  to  an  extent  that  makes 
literature  of  it.  Voltaire's  is  more  fundamental,  more 
important,  more  vital,  but  it  is  not  more  exquisite.  Ee- 
nan's  is  less  pointed.  I  recall  no  instance  in  which  it 
misses  fire.  One  can  read  the  passages  it  illuminates 
again  and  again,  and  always  with  a  renewed  feeling  of 
that  intimate  pleasure  born  of  the  appreciation  of  wit 
alone.     A  considerable  number  of  dignities  bear  its  scars, 

155 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

but  there  is  hardly  a  case  in  which  these  have  not  been 
bestowed  in  the  interests  of  truth.  The  rejoinder  to  Mr. 
Newman's  reply  to  the  "  Lectures  on  Translating 
Homer,"  for  example,  is  a  unique  piece  of  sustained 
irony  absolutely  impeccable  in  its  restraint  within  the 
limits  of  self-proving  statement.  A  dozen  other  in- 
stances, of  a  pungency  thoroughly  personal,  will  occur  to 
any  reader  familiar  with  his  works. 

His  wit,  however,  thoroughly  personal  in  its  pun- 
gency as  it  is,  is  an  instrument  rather  than  a  medium 
with  him,  as  I  have  intimated.  Outside  of  it  he  cer- 
tainly lacked  that  indefinable  but  very  definite  element 
of  character  that  we  know  as  temperament.  Lacking 
energy,  he  lacked  also  the  genius  of  which  he  himself 
affirmed  energy  to  be  the  main  constituent.  He  freely 
acknowledged  this,  and  made  the  best  of  it.  He  made, 
in  fact,  a  great  deal  of  it.  Without  in  the  least  over- 
rating himself  he  took  himself  with  absolute  serious- 
ness, and  his  work  from  first  to  last  is  informed  with 
the  high  sincerity  of  a  consistent  purpose  —  the  purpose 
of  being  nobly  useful  to  his  time  and  country  by  preach- 
ing to  them  precisely  the  gospel  he  conceived  they 
most  vitally  needed.  For  the  consideration  of  his  pub- 
lic and  his  era  he  deemed  energy  less  important  than 
light,  earnestness  less  needful  than  sweetness,  genius 
less  beneficent  than  reasonableness,  erudition  less 
called  for  than  culture. 

To  the  advocacy  of  these  ends  he  brought  an  es- 
sentially critical  spirit.     He  was  in  endowment  and  in 

156 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

equipment  the  first  of  English  critics.  Among  English 
critics,  indeed,  he  stands  quite  alone.  No  other  has  his 
candor,  his  measure  of  disinterestedness,  his  faculty  of 
extracting  their  application  from  the  precedents  indi- 
cated by  culture.  But  he  is  also  eminently  an  English 
critic.  Disinterestedness  pure  and  simple,  disinterested- 
ness to  the  point  of  detachment  he  neither  illustrated 
nor  believed  in  —  much  as  he  advocated  the  free  play 
of  consciousness  in  dealing  with  subjects  of  vital  con- 
cern.    He  gave  the  widest  extension  to  the  term  moral 

—  as,  for  example,  when  he  comments  on  Voltaire's 
praise  of  English  poetry  for  its  greatness  in  moral  ideas 

—  but  there  is  unmistakably  the  moral  element  of  pur- 
pose in  both  his  criticism  and  his  poetry,  which  ranks 
him,  I  repeat,  as  a  critic  and  poet  who  is  not  merely 
nor  even  mainly  an  artist  but  is  an  apostle  as  well. 

Ill 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  his  criticism,  even  his 
purely  literary  criticism,  should  be  altogether  syn- 
thetic. It  is  even  didactic.  He  had,  it  is  true,  a  re- 
markable gift  for  analysis — witness  his  Emerson,  his 
clairvoyant  separation  of  the  strains  of  Celtic,  Greek, 
Teutonic,  inspiration  in  English  poetry,  his  study  of 
Homeric  translation,  his  essays  on  Keats  and  Gray. 
But  in  spite  of  his  own  advocacy  of  criticism  as  the  art 
of  "seeing  the  object  as  in  itself  it  really  is,"  and  his 
assertion  that  "  the  main  thing  is  to  get  one's  self  out 

157 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

of  the  way  and  let  humanity  judge,"  he  was  himself 
never  content  with  this.  He  is  always  concerned  with 
the  significance  of  the  object  once  clearly  perceived 
and  determined.  And  though  he  never  confuses  the 
judgment  of  humanity  (to  use  his  rather  magniloquent 
expression)  by  argumentation  and  special  pleading,  his 
treatment  of  his  theme  is  to  the  last  degree  idiosyn- 
cratic. He  unfolds  it  and  lets  it  speak  for  itself,  but 
he  is  prodigiously  interested  in  the  process,  and  we,  in 
turn,  are  interested  in  the  happy  fashion  in  which  he 
conducts  it.  Sometimes,  indeed,  in  this  way,  the  pro- 
cess eclipses  the  product,  and  you  remember  such 
felicities  as  his  "epoch  of  expansion"  and  "epoch  of 
concentration,"  without  quite  remembering  to  which  he 
assigns  Burke  or  Shakespeare ;  or  you  recall  his 
"  method  "  and  "  secret "  of  Jesus  without  quite  bear- 
ing in  mind  which  is  which.  His  machinery,  in  a 
word,  sometimes  rivets  attention.  And  this  is  even 
more  strongly  attested  by  the  fact  that  it  is  occasion- 
ally so  obvious  as  to  arouse  irritation  in  readers  in- 
sensitive to  its  nice  adjustments  and  rhythmic  repeti- 
tions, in  which  case  the  product  also  is  doubtless 
missed  altogether. 

Moreover,  no  pure  analyst  (such  as  Sainte-Beuve), 
occupied  with  the  endeavor  to  see  the  object  as  iii  itself 
it  really  is,  would  evince  so  much  interest  in  its  con- 
notation. Arnold  is  interested  in  removing — often  in 
satirizing — the  current  misconceptions  of  it.  He  does 
not  write  of  Milton   and  Goethe,  but  of  "A  French 

158 


MATTHEW  AKNOLD 

Critic  on  Milton,"  "A  French  Critic  on  Goethe,"  to 
show  how  differently  these  popular  idols  are  estimated 
hj  a  disinterested  critic  from  the  way  in  which  they 
are  estimated  popularly.  In  his  panegyric  on  Falk- 
land, he  is  thinking  also  of  Mr.  Freeman.  He  notes 
the  literary  influences  of  academies  because  they  are 
just  such  as  he  conceives  useful  to  check  and  discipline 
the  "  freaks  "  and  "  violences  "  of  Mr.  Palgrave,  and  to 
temper  the  provinciahty  of  Mr.  Kinglake.  Never  has 
the  missionary  spirit  of  which  I  have  spoken  been 
exhibited  with  more  charm  and  more  distinction — less 
associated  with  its  customary  concomitants.  But 
never,  also,  has  it  been  more  mistakably  illustrated. 
"  Eeal  criticism,"  he  says,  "  obeys  an  instinct  prompting  \ 
it  to  try  to  know  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  • 
in  the  world,  irrespective  of  practice,  politics,  audi 
everything  of  the  kind."  This  is  the  burden  of  the 
stimulating  essay  on  "  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the 
Present  Time."  _  But  instead  of  the  disinterestedness  ' 
which  he  advocates  in  such  interested  fashion,  Arnold 
was  always  mightily  concerned  about  practice  and 
politics  and  everything  of  the  kind.  Given  his  geneal- 
ogy and  environment,  he  could  hardly  be  other  than 
he  was.  He  was  bound  to  interest  himself  in  the 
Burials  Bill,  the  Deceased  Wife's  Sister  Bill,  the  law 
of  bequest  and  entail,  the  Crimean  "War,  the  Irish 
Home  Eule  question,  ritualism,  the  popularization  of 
the  Bible,  the  question  of  better  secondary  education, 
the  question  of  the  classics  versus  the  sciences,  and  so 

159 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

on.  "  The  Englishman  has  been  called  a  political  an- 
imal," lie  says,  and  he  was,  as  I  have  said,  very  much 
of  an  Englishman.  And  quite  as  much  as  his  social, 
political,  and  religious  writings,  his  literary  criticism  is 
explained  by  the  circumstance  that  he  was  the  son  of 
Dr.  Arnold  of  Kugby,  and  his  environment  the  Eng- 
land of  our  day. 

He  had,  however,  unmistakably  his  own  way  of 
being  an  Englishman,  and  if  his  concern  was  moral  and 
his  aim  didactic,  as  they  certainly  were,  the  disinter- 
estedness he  inculcates  appears  in  his  method.  One 
may  say,  in  fact,  that  his  motive  is  didactic  and  his 
method  disinterested.  His  criticism  thus  becomes 
truly  constructive.  In  form  he  does  not  dogmatize, 
he  deduces ;  he  does  not  argue,  he  elucidates  ;  he  uses 
his  subject  to  illustrate  his  idea.  His  idea,  indeed,  is 
his  formal  subject,  however  near  his  heart  its  applica- 
tion may  be.  He  deals  with  ideas  directly,  and  his 
genius  for  generalization  appears  even  where  he  is 
most  pointedly  and  pithily  specific.  The  essay  on 
"  Equality  "  is  an  excellent  instance.  He  is  concerned 
about  the  specific  advantage  of  restricting  the  English 
freedom  of  bequest  and  the  consequent  distribution  of 
wealth.  But  he  advocates  the  reform  by  presenting 
the  idea  of  equality  in  the  most  attractive,  disinter- 
ested, and  detached  way,  as  if  it  were  merely  a  literary 
thesis.  The  disinterested  free  play  of  consciousness 
that  he  celebrates  in  criticism  is  usually  displayed  in 
analysis — notably  in  French  criticism,  of  which  he  is 

160 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

thinking,  where  in  any  given  case  the  synthesis  is  apt 
to  be  assumed.  (For,  I  suppose  it  will  be  admitted 
that  in  criticism  the  French  are  further  along  than 
ourselves,  that  is  to  say,  can  safely  take  more  for 
granted.)  But  with  Arnold  the  disinterestedness  ap- 
pears in  the  detailed  construction  of  a  thesis,  whose 
central  idea  on  the  other  hand  is  apt  to  be  an  abstrac- 
tion held  interestedly,  to  which  abstraction  the  con- 
crete parts  have  the  relation  of  purely  contributory 
exposition. 

It  is  obvious,  therefore,  that  his  criticism  differs  in 
kind  from  that  of  other  writers.  It  differs  especially 
from  that  most  in  vogue  at  the  present  time.  It  is 
eminently  the  antithesis  of  impressionist  criticism.  It 
has  behind  it  what  may  fairly  pass  for  a  body  of 
doctrine,  though  a  body  of  doctrine  as  far  as  possible 
removed  from  system  and  pedantry.  It  is  wholly 
unfettered  by  academic  conventions,  such  as,  citing 
Addison,  he  calls  "  the  sort  of  thing  that  held  our  fa- 
thers spellbound  in  admiration."  But  it  is  still  more 
removed  from  the  irresponsible  exercise  of  the  nervous 
system  however  attuned  to  tast^  and  sensitized  by  cul- 
ture. Certain  definite  ideas,  held  with  elastic  firmness 
but  not  developed  into  any  set  of  procrustean  princi- 
ples, formed  his  credo,  and  his  criticism  consisted  in 
the  apphcation  of  these  as  a  test  and  measure  of  quality 
and  worth.  Their  simplicity  and  their  searchingness 
made  their  application  fundamental,  whether  or  no  in 
every  case  it  was  either  sound  in  emphasis  or  sufficient 

161 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

There  is  a  great  deal  more  tx)  be  said  of  Homer  than 
that  he  is  simple,  rapid  in  thought,  rapid  in  move- 
ment and  noble,  but  these  things  are  at  least  essential. 
Emerson  is  to  many  readers  something  more  than  "  a 
friend  and  aider  of  the  human  spirit,"  but  not  something 
other.  Shelley's  poetry  is  undervalued  in  exclusive 
censure  of  its  insubstantiality,  but  insubstantial  and,  in 
a  vital  sense,  vapid  much  of  it  unquestionably  is. 
Joubert  will  probably  not  outlive  Macaulay,  but  what 
he  stands  for  undoubtedly  will.  Victor  Hugo  is  vastly 
more  than  a  great  romance  writer,  but  a  poet  "  of  the 
race  and  lineage  of  Shakespeare  "  he  is  not. 

Arnold  passed  his  intellectual  life  indeed,  whatever 
his  didactic  strain,  in  the  world  of  ideas.  No  English 
writer,  certainly,  is  richer  in  them.  He  touched  nothing 
that  did  not  set  his  critical  imagination  at  work.  He 
saw  things  in  tlieir  bearings,  and  saw  in  them  something 
ultimate  as  well  as  something  actual.  His  imagination 
being  critical  and  not  fanciful,  there  was  of  course  an 
order  of  ideas  that  did  not  attract  it.  He  not  only 
neglected  the  notional  and  the  trivial,  but  the  merely 
curious,  whether  scientific  or  testhetic ;  ideas  insuscepti- 
ble of  appHcation  to  life  did  not  claim  his  attention. 
Possibly  this  may  be  felt  as  a  limitation  if  one  compares 
him  with  Sainte-Beuve,  who  nevertheless,  in  some  in- 
stances, paid  for  his  universality  the  penalty  of  fatuity, 
just  as  even  Goethe's  pursuit  of  completeness  legiti- 
mately earned  for  him  Paul  de  Saint  Victor's  epithet 
"  the  Jupiter  Pluvius  of  ennui"     But  as  compared  with 

162 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

any  English  writer,  certainly  with  any  modern  Enghsh 
writer,  Arnold's  plenitude  of  ideas  can  only  be  obscured 
by  the  circumstance  that  he  so  ordered  and  marshalled 
his  array  of  them  that  the  subordinate  ones  escape 
readers  who  note  only  the  general  lines  along  which 
these  are  grouped  and  to  the  reUef  of  which  they  beauti- 
fully contribute.  There  is  no  ohiter  to  arrest  the  run- 
ning reader,  but  the  very  texture  of  the  treatment  of 
all  his  very  definite  and  salient  theses  is  woven  of 
ancillary  ideas  of  enough  stimulus  to  furnish  the  entire 
equipment  of  an  inferior  writer.  In  a  general  way — 
for  example,  in  his  advocacy  of  culture  —  he  illustrates 
as  well  as  enforces  his  theme.  And  not  incidentally — 
which  would  of  course  make  a  greater  show — but 
organically.  One  may  cite  a  dozen  examples  —  such 
as,  in  small,  "  A  Speech  at  Eton,"  where  the  single 
word  emeiKeia  is  made  the  nucleus  of  a  really  wonderful 
web  of  suggestiveness ;  such  as,  and  par  excellence,  the 
"  Study  of  Celtic  Literature "  and  the  "  Lectures  on 
Translating  Homer." 

His  criticism  is  distinguished  also  from  much  that 
is  currently  popular  in  being  wholly  non-scientific.  To 
begin  with,  it  is  interested  very  largely  in  the  one  ele- 
ment that  eludes  the  scientific  spirit  —  the  element  of 
personahty.  It  does  not  ignore  the  substantial  con- 
tributions that  the  scientific  spirit  has  made  to  the 
theory  and  the  practice  of  criticism.  It  merely  con- 
cerns itself,  and  in  a  personal  way  mainly,  with  material 
that  is  too  highly  organized  to  be  satisfactorily  consid- 

163 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

ered  when  considered  materially,  according  to  Taine's 
(famous  method.  It  is  not  occupied  with  origins  —  a 
subject  that  has  an  almost  universal  interest  at  the 
present  day — nor  much  with  relations,  the  study  of 
which  for  being  more  literary  is  hardly  less  scientific. 
To  Arnold  apparently  the  study  of  heredity  and  en- 
vironment involved  in  literary  criticism  based  on  "  the 
man,  the  moment  and  the  milieu"  theory,  has  very 
much  the  interest  that  the  process  of  running  up  all 
our  manifold  appetites  and  emotions  into  the  two  primi- 
tive instincts  of  self-preservation  and  reproduction 
would  have,  and  no  more.  It  is  sound  enough,  no 
doubt,  but  in  large  measure  superfluous  —  at  any  rate 
elementary.  What  is  really  interesting  is  the  efflores- 
cence not  the  germ,  nor  even  the  evolution  of  the 
germ  —  I  mean  from  a  literary  or  any  but  a  strictly 
scientific  point  of  view.  Similarly  the  study  of  rela- 
tions, upon  which  the  incontestably  useful  classification 
of  developed  literary  phenomena  is  based,  interests  him 
^  only  cursorily.  It  is  distinctions,  rather,  that  his  criti- 
j/cism  considers.  In  the  difl&cult  effort  to  "  see  the  ob- 
ject as  in  itself  it  really  is "  his  method  is  that  of 
definition  through  distinguisliing  the  object  as  it  really 
is  from  the  various  appearances  that  dissemble  it,  and 
from  those  of  its  own  phases,  ancestral  or  circumstan- 
tial, that  may  account  for  but  do  not  exhibit  it. 

Taine,  who  in  proclaiming  his  method  disclaimed 
having  a  system,  but  who  certainly  applied  his  method 
most  systematically,  wrote  history,  to  be  sure,  rather 

164 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

than  criticism,  and  called  history  "  applied  psychology." 
His  psychology,  too,  is  of  an  extremely  physiological 
cast.  And  neither  history  nor  physiological  psychology 
ever  engaged  Arnold's  attention  in  dealing  with  litera- 
ture. But  Taine's  point  of  view  prevails  widely  witm 
more  or  less  modification  in  pure  literary  criticism.  A 
critic  quite  otherwise  psychological,  the  late  Edmond 
Scherer,  for  example,  adopts  it  substantially  in  main- 
taining that  "out  of  the  writer's  character  and  the 
study  of  his  age  there  spontaneously  issues  the  right 
understanding  of  his  work."  This  is  the  contention  of 
followers  of  the  "  historical  method,"  who  are  far  fromj 
being  as  systematic  as  Taine  or  as  temperamentally 
inclined  to  consider  literary  phenomena  as  impersonal, 
irresponsible,  and  ultimately  mechanical.  Of  this  as- 
sertion, that  a  right  understanding  of  an  author's  work 
will  thus  spontaneously  issue,  Arnold  himself  says: 
"  In  a  mind  qualified  in  a  certain  way  it  will — not  in 
all  minds.  And  it  will  be  that  mind's  '  personal  sensa- 
tions'" — "  personal  sensations "  being  precisely  what 
M.  Scherer  wishes  to  circumvent  in  the  historical 
method  of  criticism.  To  him,  for  example,  the  lauda- 
tion of  Milton  by  Macaulay  is  an  expression  of  "  per- 
sonal sensations  "  ;  as  to  which  Arnold  aptly  remarks : 
"  It  cannot  be  said  that  Macaulay  had  not  studied  the 
character  of  Milton  and  the  history  of  the  times  in 
which  he  Uved.  But  a  right  understanding  of  Milton 
did  not  'spontaneously  issue'  therefrom  in  the  mind 
of  Macaulay,  because  Macaulay's  mind  was  that  of  a  , 

165 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

rhetorician,  not  of  a  disinterested  critic."  Arnold's 
own  theme  is  the  personal  element  in  the  works  of 
others,  and  its  treatment  is  frankly  the  application  to 
these  of  this  element  in  himself.  The  report  it  gives 
is  the  result,  though  this  personal  report  is,  as  I  began 
by  noting,  very  different  from  an  impressionist  report 
in  being  carefully  controlled  and  corrected  by  culture, 
framed,  in  fact,  in  accordance  with  the  express  prin- 
ciple of  classic  comparisons  that  he  eloquently  advo- 
cates and  specifically  illustrates  in  liis  essay  on  "  The 
Study  of  Poetry,"  and  as  far  removed  from  irresponsi- 
bility as  if  it  claimed  scientific  exactness. 

His  subject,  indeed,  although  as  I  have  intimated 
almost  always  an  idea  or  a  number  of  associated  ideas, 
is  often  ideas  illustrated  or  exemplified  in  some  per- 
sonality. It  is  what  Joubert,  Keats,  the  Guerins, 
Heine,  BjTon  were  themselves  and  what,  in  relation  to 
ideas,  they  stand  for,  in  each  instance.  It  is  not  at  all 
how  they  came  to  be  what  they  were,  their  evolution, 
the  influences  of  their  environment  of  time  and  place, 
or  their  influence  in  turn  upon  their  age  and  succeed- 
ing ones.  In  brief,  though  their  general  interest  is 
always  drawn  out,  in  contradistinction  to  the  specific 
interest  of  pure  portraiture,  they  are  not  generalized. 
They  are  neither  depicted  as,  for  example,  Sterne  is 
depicted  by  Thackeray,  nor  accounted  for  as  Shake- 
speare is  accounted  for  by  Taine.  Their  qualities  not 
their  tendencies,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
their  essential  and  intrinsic  not  their  accidental  quali- 

166 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

ties,  and  of  these  only  the  typical  and  significant  ones, 
are  dealt  with.  They  are  considered  in  the  light  of 
their  relation  to  literature,  but  nevertheless  distinctly 
as  personalities  whose  relation  to  literature,  too,  is  a 
personal  relation.  Arnold's  criticism  may  be  loosely 
characterized  as  literature  teaching  by  examples,  just 
as  history  has  been  called  philosophy  so  teaching. 
Only,  his  examples  are  not  the  various  literary  works, 
isolated,  taken  seriatim,  or  grouped,  but  the  significant 
and  illustrative  wi'iters  in  whose  personalities  them- 
selves appear  most  definitely  and  concretely  visible — 
thus  fused,  unified  and  at  the  same  time  most  elabo- 
rately as  well  as  most  subtly  presented — those  literary 
phenomena  that  have  the  most  critical  value.  To  Car- 
lyle  history  is  the  annotated  record  of  great  men.  To 
Arnold  criticism  is  the  pertinent  characterization  of 
great  writers,  in  the  mind  and  art  of  whom  their  works 
are  co-ordinated  with  an  explicitness  and  effectiveness 
not  to  be  attained  by  any  detailed  and  objective  analy- 
sis of  the  works  themselves. 

Notliing  is  commoner  than  to  hear  literature  classi- 
fied as  creative  and  critical,  with  the  inference  of 
mutual  exclusiveness  between  the  two  branches  and 
the  marked  inferiority  of  criticism  to  what  is  called 
creation.  Arnold  performed  a  signal  service  in  char- 
acterizing literature  as  "  a  criticism  of  life  "  and  thereby 
revealing  even  to  the  unreflecting  the  essentially  criti- 
cal nature  and  function  of  the  truly  creative  "  thought 
of   thinking   souls" — to  recall  Carlyle's  definition  of 

167 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

literature  itself.  His  emphasis  was  of  course  on  the 
word  "life,"  but  the  incidental  implication  as  to  how 
literature  is  concerned  with  its  proper  "  content "  has  a 
value  of  its  own.  To  deal  with  life  powerfully  and 
profoundly  is  to  deal  with  it  critically.  And  in  this 
fundamental  sense  the  "  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn "  and 
the  "  Ode  to  Duty  "  are  themselves  criticism.  No  one 
would  pretend  that  specifically  they  belong  to  the 
literature  of  criticism,  however,  though  they  illustrate 
the  importance  of  the  critical  element  in  Uterature  in 
showing  that  their  true  superiority  to  many  other 
creative  works  of  their  kind  is  their  soundness  and 
elevation  as  criticism — as  criticism  of  life.  Specifi- 
cally the  literature  of  criticism  is  concerned  with  litera- 
ture rather  than  directly  with  life.  But  in  this  way 
and  in  a  sense  it  has  the  office  and  character  of  a  court 
of  appeal,  and  its  functions  may  be  as  honorable — as 
its  roll  is  as  distinguished — as  those  of  any  other  de- 
partment of  literary  activity.  So  far  as  a  priori  spec- 
ulation is  concerned,  it  is  entitled  to  immunity  from 
jejune  formularies  about  the  superiority  of  creation  to 
criticism,  as  such,  and  of  books  to  books  about  books. 

What  criticism  lacks,  and  what  will  always  be  a 
limitation  to  its  interest  and  its  power,  is  the  element 
of  beauty  which  it  of  necessity  largely  foregoes  in  its 
concentration  upon  truth.  It  is  less  potent  and  persua- 
sive than  poetry,  than  romance,  not  because  in  dealing 
with  literature  rather  than  directly  with  life  it  occu- 
pies a  lower  or  less  vital  field  but  because  its  province 

168 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

lies  outside  the  realm  of  all  those  puissant  aids  to  co- 
gency and  impressiveness  that  appeal  to  the  sense  of 
beauty  and  accordingly  influence  so  powerfully  not 
only  the  intellect  but  the  emotions  as  well.  But  of  its 
service  to  truth  there  can  be  no  question.  Its  role  is 
not  confined  to  exposition,  to  interpretation.  It  is  a 
synthesis  of  its  naturally  more  or  less  heterogeneous 
subject.  It  is  a  characterization  of  art  as  art  is  a  char- 
acterization of  nature.  And  in  characterizing,  it  trans- 
lates as  art  itself  translates.  It  is  only  in  criticism 
that  the  thought  of  an  era  becomes  articulate,  crystal- 
lized, coherently  communicated.  And  real  criticism, 
criticism  worthy  its  office — criticism  such  as  Arnold's 
—  contributes  as  well  as  co-ordinates  and  exhibits.  It 
is  itself  literature,  because  it  is  itself  origination  as 
well  as  comment,  and  is  the  direct  expression  of  ideas 
rather  than  an  expression  of  ideas  at  one  remove  — 
either  chronicling  their  effect  on  the  critic  after  the 
manner  of  the  impressionist  or  weighing  them  accord- 
ing to  some  detached  and  objective  judicial  standard. 

IV 

Public  questions  interested  Arnold  acutely  and  his 
discussion  of  them  was  always  suggestive  if  not  conclu- 
sive. He  dealt  most  successfully  perhaps  with  those 
that  were  mainly  social  in  their  nature.  The  essay  on 
"Equality,"  for  example,  is  one  of  his  best.  That  on 
"  Democracy  "  is  hardly  its  equal.     Both  are,  however, 

169 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

eminently  stimulating  because  they  deal  with  general 
principles  and  are,  as  the  former  asserts,  "  for  the 
thoughts  of  those  who  think,"  at  the  same  time  that  the 
commendation  of  equality  as  an  ideal  is  convincingly 
buttressed  by  the  salutary  way  in  which  laws  of  be-' 
quest  are  shown  to  operate  in  correction  of  the  natural 
tendency  to  inequality ;  and  that  such  penetrating  re- 
marks as  "  We  have  never  yet  been  a  self-governing 
democracy,  nor  anything  like  it,"  illustrate  and  enforce 
his  discussion  of  the  more  political  theme.  In  his 
dealing  with  questions  of  general  public  interest,  in- 
deed, it  can  be  said  of  him  as  he  said  of  Burke's  treat- 
ment of  politics,  that  he  "  saturated  them  with  thought." 
But  in  more  purely  practical  politics  he  was  naturally 
less  at  home.  Irish  Home  Rule  obsessed  him  in  his 
later  years,  but  to  an  American  sense  at  least,  he  was 
not  happy  in  his  treatment  of  it  even  from  the  political 
philosopher's  point  of  view ;  and  from  the  politician's 
what  he  said  never,  probably,  seemed  very  cogent,  as 
he  was  of  course  very  well  aware.  He  used  to  express 
surprise  at  American  sympathy  with  Irish  separatism, 
and  compare  Irish  coercion  with  our  Southern  coercion 
as  though  the  "  unionism "  of  the  two  were  identical. 
Like  most  Englishmen  he  made  in  this  the  two  mistakes 
of  presupposing  our  interest  in  the  welfare  of  England 
quand  rnSme  and  as  against  Ireland  in  case  of  the  two 
clashing,  and  of  fancying  the  disruption  of  a  homo- 
geneous people  parallel  to  the  separation  of  two  peoples 
intensely  inter-hostile.     All  that  he  wrote  about  the 

170 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

Home  Rule  question  is  no  doubt  already  forgotten, 
though  much  of  it  was  pungent  and  all  of  it  patriotic. 

On  the  other  hand  his  "  Friendship's  Garland  "  is  a 
little  classic.  The  section  entitled  "  My  Countrymen," 
in  especial,  is  a  perfect  piece  of  writing,  full  of  the  most 
delicate  irony,  by  turns  playful  and  mordant,  and 
enough  in  itself  to  establish  his  eminence  both  as  a  wit 
and  as  a  satirist.  British  political  philistinism  was 
never  so  deftly  flayed.  The  essay  on  "  British  Liberal- 
ism and  Irish  Catholicism,"  a  plea  for  a  Catholic  uni- 
versity in  Ireland,  is  a  forcible  and  luminous  discussion 
of  much  larger  import  than  the  title  in  itself  would  im- 
ply. But  Arnold  never  touched  the  great  subject  of 
education  without  illumining  it,  and  he  has  treated 
many  phases  of  it,  not  all  of  which  by  any  means  re- 
late particularly  to  the  problems  of  his  own  country. 
The  principles  upon  which  he  based  his  argumentation 
are  of  universal  pertinence ;  and  liis  conception  of  edu- 
cation as  eminently  a  public  concern  and  one  of  the 
most  vital  of  public  interests,  his  view  of  the  importance 
to  civilization  of  what  is  called  secondary  education  and 
his  exhibition  of  the  relation  of  schools  to  culture  count 
as  so  many  contributions  to  literature  itself. 

Culture,  of  course,  is  his  central  theme.  His  name 
is  popularly  and  rightly  more  closely  associated  with  it 
than  with  anything  else.  It  is  his  notable  reliance  and 
recommendation  in  every  department  of  thought  and 
action  with  which  he  occupies  himself — religious, 
poetiCj_  critical,  political,  social  —  his  gospel,  in  a  word. 

171 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

Culture  he  defines  as  "  a  pursuit  of  our  total  perfection 
by  means  of  getting  to  know,  on  all  matters  which 
most  concern  us,  the  best  which  has  been  known  and 
thought  in  the  world;  and  through  this  knowledge, 
turning  a  stream  of  fresh  and  free  thought  upon  our 
stock  notions  and  habits  which  we  now  follow  stanchly 
but  mechanically,  vainly  imagining  that  there  is  a  vir- 
tue in  following  them  stanchly  which  makes  up  for  the 
mischief  of  following  them  mechanically."  He  exhibits 
and  illustrates  its  value  eloquently  and  convincingly, 
showing,  in  a  dozen  ways,  how  it  inspires  correctness 
and  corrects  errors.  It  is  his  universal  solvent.  He 
applies  it  in  discussing  questions  of  all  sorts,  the  most 
practical  as  well  as  the  most  abstract.  From  it  he  de- 
rives a  number  of  general  principles  which  its  pursuit 
of  perfection  involves.  In  the  first  place  culture  in- 
volves the  ideal  of  perfection  as  residing  in  "  an  in- 
ward condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit  and  not  in  an 
outward  set  of  circumstances  " ;  then  as  harmonious,  an 
expansion  of  all  the  powers  for  beauty  and  for  good  of 
human  nature ;  then  as  a  general  expansion  wholly  at 
variance,  for  example,  with  the  maxim  of  "  every  man 
for  himself."  From  this  he  deduces  its  salutary  appli- 
cation to  the  phenomena  of  the  large  mechanical  and 
external  element  in  modern  civilization,  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  individualism,  of  our  want  of  flexibility,  our 
concentration  upon  one  aspect  of  a  thing  and  our  blind- 
ness to  its  other  sides,  our  faith  in  "  machinery  "  as  an 
end  in  itself  —  the  machinery  variously  known  as  free- 

172 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

dom,  population,  railroads,  wealth,  churches,  political 
institutions.  It  is  evident  that  the  idea  of  culture  has 
endless  applications.  The  chapter  titles  of  "  Culture 
and  Anarchy  "  would  suggest  them  to  any  one  who  had 
never  read  the  book  —  "  Sweetness  and  Light,"  "  Doing 
as  One  Likes,"  "  Barbarians,  Philistines,  Populace," 
"  Hebraism  and  Hellenism "  and  so  on.  Numbers  of 
epitomizing  sentences  from  the  same  work  might  be 
cited  to  show  them ;  for  example :  "  No  man,  who 
knows  nothing  else,  knows  even  his  Bible,"  or,  "  And 
to  be,  like  our  honored  and  justly  honored  Faraday,  a 
great  natural  philosopher  with  one  side  of  his  being  and 
a  Sandemanian  with  the  other,  would  to  Archimedes 
have  been  impossible."  There  are  dehcious  pages  in 
"  Culture  and  Anarchy,"  and  its  vivacity  no  longer  ob- 
scures its  soundness,  probably,  even  for  readers  of  the 
temperament  of  those  in  whom  when  it  first  appeared 
it  awakened  discomfort  if  not  dislike.  Every  one  now- 
adays is  theoretically  a  friend  of  culture  —  even  the 
strenuous. 

He  was  not  particularly  happy  in  dealing  with 
America.  He  could  not  let  us  alone.  He  seemed  to 
be  haunted  by  the  desire  to  subject  us,  also,  to  his  dis- 
crimination. But  he  could  not,  I  fancy,  quite  charac- 
terize us  to  his  satisfaction.  At  least  a  tentativeness 
that  is  almost  touching,  certainly  very  charming,  is  to 
be  felt  in  his  most  systematic  efforts  to  do  so.  When 
he  lectured  here  he  was  more  than  circumspect,  he  was 
cautious;  yet  at  the  same  time  he  was  very  coura- 

173 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

geously  conscientious  in  what  he  said  to  lis  and  of  us. 
lie  was  very  desirous  of  complimenting  us  by  avoiding 
flattery  and  of  in  this  way  increasing  the  value  of  what 
good  he  could  say.  The  public  no  doubt  "  caught  the 
idea,"  but  he  failed  a  little  perhaps  to  convey  its  im- 
portance, to  communicate  to  us  the  importance  that 
he  himself — most  complimentarily — seemed  to  attach 
to  it.  Our  public — even  our  lyceum  public — though 
hospitable  enough,  is  not  very  conscious  of  its  need 
for  the  medicine  of  sincere  and  searching  criticism. 
Its  misgivings  are  few,  and  there  is  something  lusty 
about  its  good  nature.  It  imagines  that  it  is  something 
of  a  critic  itself.  It  found  something  a  little  superfine 
and  superfluous  in  the  attempt  to  tell  it  delicately  that 
it  was  gross. 

The  "  Discourses  in  America "  undoubtedly  read 
better  to-day  than  they  sounded  then.  That  on  Emer- 
son is  surely  one  of  the  most  appreciative  as  well  as 
most  discriminating  things  ever  written  about  its  sub- 
ject, and  is  on  a  very  high  plane.  The  "  Literature 
and  Science "  is  delightful,  a  real  vadc  mecum  for  the 
humanist.  The  discourse  on  "Numbers,"  however, 
which  is  the  one  most  specially  American  in  its  subject 
and  address,  is,  like  the  rest  of  his  \vritings  on  America, 
decidedly  less  authoritative  than  his  writings  on  almost 
any  other  theme.  The  fact  is  not  surprising.  As  a 
theme  we  must  be  acknowledged  to  be  tryingly  in- 
choate, elusively  heterogeneous.  A  still  greater  diffi- 
culty is  presented  by  the  absence  of  precedents  in  our 

174 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

case.  In  a  sense  we  are  necessarily  more  unlike  any 
European  people  than  any  European  people  is  unlike 
any  of  its  fellows.  There  is  a  break  in  environment 
which  minimizes  the  element  of  ancestry  in  our  evolu- 
tion. And  our  inherited  traits  are  modified  by  an 
altogether  exceptional  eclecticism  in  "institutions." 
The  notion  that  underlies  the  discourse  on  "  Numbers  " 
is  that  we  are  essentially  the  English  middle  class, 
upper  and  lower,  because  we  have  no  aristocracy  and 
no  populace — at  least  apart  from  immigration.  The 
error  is  shared  by  most  European  writers  about  Amer- 
ica, who  forget  that  even  the  English  middle  class  un- 
modified by  either  the  aristocracy  or  the  populace  would 
be  very  different  from  its  present  self.  Perhaps  it 
might  be  less  "  vulgarized  "  if  it  had  no  "  materialized  " 
class  to  weigh  it  down,  and  no  "brutalized"  class  to 
sustain  its  self-conceit.  In  any  event,  to  preach  to  us 
the  now  famous  doctrine  of  the  remnant  is  to  miscon- 
ceive us.  TVe  have  a  "remnant"  of  our  own  whose 
activities  instead  of  exalting  our  esteem  of  "  remnants  " 
tend  to  make  us  suspicious  of  them.  It  represents  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  only  through  artificial  selection, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  even  if  the  rest  of  the  nation 
were  "  sacrificed  to  it,"  as  Arnold  says  the  English  are 
to  the  production  of  their  aristocracy,  the  result  would 
be  less  "  splendid."  He  says  somewhere  that  the  Eng- 
lish "  have  no  people,  only  masses  with  vulgar  tastes." 
But  so  far,  at  all  events,  and,  as  I  say,  immigration 
apart,  our  majority  is  exactly  describable  as  "  people  " 

175 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

rather  than  as  "  masses,"  witli  vulgar  or,  indeed,  any 
other  tastes.  Our  "average  man,"  accordingly,  other 
things  being  equal,  is  apt  to  inspire  more  confidence 
and  receive  more  respect  than  our  exceptional  man — 
unless  the  latter  be  (like  Lincoln,  for  example)  simply 
our  average  man  raised  to  a  higher  power.  But  even 
in  his  writings  on  America,  where  their  application  is 
occasionally  less  apt  than  elsewhere,  Arnold's  general 
principles  are,  as  elsewhere,  cogent,  stimulant,  and 
suggestive. 


His  distinction  as  a  religious  writer  has  been  im- 
perfectly perceived,  which  is  singular,  considering  the 
very  great  religious  influence  that  he  has  exerted.  It 
consists  in  the  way  in  which  he  has  brought  out  the 
natural  truth  of  Christianity.  That  is  the  sum  and 
substance  of  "  Literature  and  Dogma,"  of  "  God  and  the 
Bible,"  and  of  the  "  Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Eelig- 
ion,"  even  of  "St.  Paul  and  Protestantism."  No  one 
has  felt  more  deeply,  and  no  one  has  so  clearly  ex- 
pressed this  essence  of  religion  denuded  of  dogma  and 
stripped  of  the  husks  of  its  traditionary  sanctions.  To 
him  religion  was  as  definite  a  realm  as  poetry.  He 
distinguished  it  from  ethics  in  very  much  the  way  in 
which  poetry  differs  from  prose,  and  characterized  it 
as  "morality  touched  by  emotion."  Eeligious  truth, 
even,  he  distinguished  from  scientific  truth  in  saying- 
that  "  truth  of  science  does  not  become  truth  of  religion 

176 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

until  it  becomes  religious."  For  a  time  his  readers 
hardly  knew  what  he  meant.  His  gospel  was  so  sim- 
ple as  to  be  startling.  "Literature  and  Dogma"  was 
taken  to  be  an  attack  on  at  least  a  vital  and  integral 
part  of  Christianity.  And  it  must  be  confessed  that 
its  sprightly  rhetoric,  through  which,  however,  it  got 
its  hearing,  gave  some  color  of  justification  for  the 
grief  of  the  judicious,  to  whom  what  he  called  Aher- 
glavhe  was  inextricably  bound  up  with  the  most  pre- 
cious verities.  The  solemn  "  Spectator  "  was  betrayed,  by 
temper,  probably,  into  speaking  of  his  ideal  as  Chris- 
tianity without  God — as  Comte's  scheme  has  been 
satirized  as  Catholicism  minus  Christianity.  What 
was  curiously  called  his  theology  seemed  very  super- 
ficial to  the  thoroughgoing,  and  aroused  what,  still 
more  curiously,  the  Editor  of  his  "  Letters "  has  felt 
justified  in  calUng  "some  just  criticisms."  Why 
"just"?  one  is  tempted  to  ask  at  the  present  day 
when  nearly  the  whole  thinking  world,  save  that  por- 
tion of  it  committed  to  the  defence  of  dogma,  has  prac- 
tically, if  insensibly,  come  to  adopt  his  view  that  the 
sanction  of  religion  is  its  natural  truth.  And  that  the 
natural  truth  of  religion  has  not  lost  its  hold  on  the 
non-clerical  thinking  world  along  with  its  traditionary 
"confessions"  and  their  philosophy,  is  due  primarily 
to  the  spirit  that  distinguishes  between  what  is  and 
what  is  not  vital  in  the  matter.  This  spirit  inspires 
much  religious  writing  at  the  present  day.  But 
Arnold's   religious  writing  does  more  than   assay  the 

177 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

alloy  of  popular  Christianity.  It  advocates,  commends, 
exalts  the  pure  metal,  points  out  its  worth  and  its  win- 
ningness,  shows  how  important  a  part  it  plays  in  the 
development  and  discipline  of  one's  highest  self,  elo- 
quently magnifies  mankind's  legitimate  concern  in  it, 
and  convincingly  establishes  its  claims  and  its  rewards. 
Nothing  is  more  singular  than  the  reticence  with 
which  1-eligion  is  treated  even  by  the  religious.  The 
sense  of  its  being  a  private,  an  intimate  and  a  sacred 
concern  hardly  accounts  for  it.  It  is  true  it  is  a  mat- 
ter of  the  heart,  and  about  matters  of  the  heart  one  is 
instinctively  reserved.  Then,  too,  the  dread  of  seeming 
hypocrisy  undoubtedly  acts  as  a  restraint.  But  that 
one  of  the  greatest  forces  in  the  moral  world  should, 
merely  as  a  subject  of  thought  and  speculation,  receive 
only  what  may  be  called  professional  and  esoteric 
attention  is  not  thus  to  be  explained.  Theology  is 
freely  considered  and  discussed,  increasingly  less  so,  of 
course,  as  its  sanctions  come  generally  to  seem  insub- 
stantial and  as,  in  consequence,  it  loses  interest.  Yet 
dogma  is  at  best  limited  and  disputed  formulary, 
whereas  the  principles  with  which  it  deals  or  misdeals 
are  universal.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  for  example, 
is  a  disputed  and  unverifiable  dogma.  The  influence 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  exquisitely  called  the  Comforter,  is 
a  matter  of  actual  experience,  as  solid  a  reality  as  that 
of  electro-magnetism.  But,  the  pulpit  of  course  aside, 
the  dogma  has  certainly  occupied  a  more  prominent 
place  in  the  minds  of  men  than  the  fact.     The  compar- 

178 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

ative  lack  of  interest  in  the  more  interesting  theme  is, 
one  would  say,  inexplicable.  Every  one  knows  that,  if 
he  would,  he  could  at  once  determine  with  his  entire 
nature  to  "  depart  from  iniquity,"  that  he  could,  if  he 
would,  successfully  accomplish  this,  and  that  the  result 
would  be  the  happiness,  so  far  as  happiness  depends 
upon  one's  self,  of  which  every  one  is  in  search  —  "  the 
peace,"  in  a  word,  "  which  passeth  all  understanding." 
Man's  capability  of  utilizing  this  force  is  a  matter  of 
consciousness,  and  the  effect  of  doing  so  is  as  demon- 
strably certain  as  the  effect  of  combustion.  It  is  diflfi- 
cult  to  see  why  it  is  not  phenomenally  as  interesting. 
It  is  surely  quite  as  important,  quite  as  deserving  the 
attention  of  the  critic,  quite  as  dignified  and  fruitful  a 
secular  theme.  And  in  spite  of  this,  in  spite  of  its 
interest  and  its  universality,  it  i&-  relegated  to  the 
theologians. 

The  explanation  doubtless  is  that,  owing  to  various 
causes  —  the  cathedral  infaUibHity  of  the  Church  and 
the  tyranny  of  Protestant  "BibHsm,"  for  instance  — 
theology  and  rehgion,  dogma  and  natural  truth,  have 
been  so  closely  and  so  long  associated  as  to  have  be- 
come amalgamated.  The  natural  history  of  dogma 
explains  its  despotism.  The  instinctive  or  empirical 
perception  of  truth  out  of  which  it  is  developed  is  lost 
sight  of  in  the  philosophic  form  it  assumes  in  final  defi- 
nition. Its  devotees  come  to  feel,  for  example,  that,  to 
use  Arnold's  phrase,  "  salvation  is  attached  to  a  right 
knowledge  of  the  Godhead."     On  the  other  hand,  those 

179 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

minds  on  whom  it  loses  its  hold  as  its  form  gradually 
discloses  its  emptiness,  forget  its  origin.  Any  formula- 
tion of  the  constitution  of  the  "  Godhead "  seeming 
absurd  when  withdrawn  from  the  sphere  of  logic  and 
brought  into  that  of  consciousness,  God  Himself  — 
whom,  as  Joubert  says,  it  is  "  not  hard  to  know  if  one 
does  not  force  one's  self  to  define  Him  "  —  is  left  out 
of  all  consideration.  Dogma  comes  to  seem,  thus,  an 
invention  instead  of  a  development,  and,  to  crude 
minds,  an  interested  invention.  Nor  is  it  crudity  alone 
that  thus  misconceives  it.  The  "  liberal "  temper  itself, 
exasperated  at  its  perversions,  wars  against  its  bases 
often.  Heine  speaks  of  "  the  fictitious  quarrel  which 
Christianity  has  cooked  up  between  the  body  and  the 
soul,"  as  if  St.  Paul's  antagonism  between  "  the  law  of 
the  members  "  and  "  the  law  of  the  mind  "  Xj^ere  not  a 
matter  of  universal  experience.  Of  the  two  tendencies, 
however,  there  can  be  no  doubt  which  is  in  accord  with 
the  Zeit-Geist  at  the  present  time.  It  is  dogma  that 
has  lost  its  hold  on  serious  minds,  and  Arnold's  great 
concern  in  his  religious  writings  is  to  save  religion  from 
going  with  it. 

He  was  himself  of  a  deeply  religious  nature,  and  his 
religion  was,  of  course,  as  any  religiousness  must  be  at 
the  present  day,  actively  Cbjistian.  People  speak  of 
Epictetus  and  of  Marcus  Aurelius  as  if  there  were 
something  religious  in  paganism  essentially  extraneous 
to  Christianity  —  as  if  born  in  later  times  within  the 
fold  of  Christianity  they  would  not,  dogma  aside,  have 

180 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

been  as  formally  Christian  as  Melanchthon  or  Sir  Thomas 
More.  Had  the  "  Discourses "  been  uttered  in  the 
thirteenth  century  Jesus  would  certainly  have  replaced 
Hercules  in  the  passage  in  which  Epictetus  calls  Her- 
cules "  the  Son  of  God."  Other  people,  who  accept  the 
fairy  tale  of  popular  religion  as  the  only  basis,  and 
metaphysical  theology  as  the  only  definition  of  Chris- 
tianity, like  the  London  "  Spectator,"  accuse  Arnold  of 
being  essentially  an  atheist  —  "just  as,"  says  Arnold, 
in  "  God  and  the  Bible,"  "  the  heathen  populace  of  Asia 
cried  out  against  Polycarp :  'Away  with  the  Atheists' " 
His  own  idea  of  the  essence  of  Christianity  he  defines, 
in  "  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism,"  as  "  something  not 
very  far,  at  any  rate,  from  this :  Grace  and  peace  by 
the  annulment  of  our  ordinary  self  through  the  mild- 
ness and  -sweet  reasonableness  of  Christ."  This  was 
the  Christianity  he  sought  to  extricate  from  the  desue- 
tude into  which  both  its  mythology  and  its  metaphysics 
have  indubitably  fallen.  To  any  one  who  feels  with 
him  that  religion  is  "  the  most  lovable  of  things,"  no 
attempt  could  be  more  attractive  or  more  important,  be 
more  properly  a  work  of  serious  literature.  He  him- 
self considered  "Literature  and  Dogma"  his  most 
important  work. 

It  is  in  the  first  place  a  constructive  attempt.  In 
the  words  of  its  secondary  title  it  is  "  an  essay  toward 
a  better  apprehension  of  the  Bible,"  and  it  was  con- 
ceived and  executed  in  the  interests  of  the  preservation 
of  religion.     To  this  end,  it  perforce  exposed  the  in- 

181 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

substantiality  of  the  current  misapprehension  of  the 
Bible — the  proof  from  prophecy,  tlie  proof  from  mir- 
acles, and  that  from  metaphysics.  Many  readers  prob- 
ably got  no  further  than  these  luminous  chapters, 
which,  it  is  true,  were  written  with  a  zest  calculated 
to  arouse  the  scepticism  of  the  suspicious.  The  attack 
on  metaphysics  was  certainly  the  least  successful  of 
this  ffround-clearing  work.  It  was  continued  in  "  God 
and  the  Bible  "  and  elaborated  to  a  degree  which  may 
fairly  be  said  to  betray  a  consciousness  of  not  having 
exactly  hit  off  the  matter.  It  was  a  depreciation  in 
deference  to  his  own  predilections,  which  were  literary 
and  religious  and  not  scientific,  of  what  a  whole  order 
of  serious  minds  rest  their  firmest  convictions  upon. 
In  his  treatment  of  the  supernatural  he  professed  to 
part  from  miracles  with  regret,  from  metaphysical 
proof  with  pleasure.  There  was  something  a  little 
Olympian  in  this.  As  he  says,  miracles  do  not  and 
never  did  happen.  Metaphysics  is  at  least  a  pseudo- 
science  which  can  only  be  attacked  in  detail  and  only 
through  its  own  terms,  just  as  universal  doubt  is  a  self- 
contradictory  affirmation.  Nothing  can  be  more  salu- 
tary, nevertheless,  for  the  many  minds  whose  vice  is 
content  with  abstractions,  than  his — extremely  meta- 
physical and  perhaps  not  too  scientifically  successful — 
attack  on  the  fundamental  concept  of  "being."  It 
does  not  convince,  but  it  cannot  fail  to  enlighten. ,  No 
vivacity,  it  is  true,  can  obscure  the  fact  that  it  is  pure 
caricature  to  say :  "  Descartes   could   look  out  of   his 

182 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

window  at  Amsterdam,  and  see  a  public  place  filled 
with  men  and  women,  and  say  to  himself  that  he  had 
no  right  to  be  certain  they  were  men  and  women,  be- 
cause they  might  after  all  be  mere  lay  figures  dressed 
up  in  hats  and  cloaks."  But  after  all  it  is  to  be  borne 
in  mind  that  the  metaphysical  proof  of  a  religious 
system  is,  like  those  from  prophecy  and  miracles, 
merely  a  part  of  its  apologetics  and  not  of  its  appeal. 

It  is  its  appeal,  its  constructive  side,  that,  as  I  say, 
constitutes  the  essential  part  of  "  Literature  and  Dog- 
ma." Its  cardinal  proposition  is  that  the  Bible  is  liter- 
ature and  not  dogma,  and  that  so  to  consider  it  is  the 
preliminary  to  a  right  and  adequate  estimate  of  it. 
Having  contended  for  an  absolute  divorce  between 
religion  and  theology  in  the  interests  of  essential  Chris- 
tianity, he  proceeds  by  treating  the  Bible  as  literature 
to  draw  out  in  a  positive  way  its  natural,  real  and 
verifiable  value  as  a  religious  document.  No  com- 
mentator on  the  Scriptures  has  ever  accomplished  a 
more  cogent  and  seductive  work  than  his  showing  of 
the  use  to  which  the  truly  religious  soul  may  put  the 
book  of  which  it  is  a  commonplace  that  it  is  the  Book 
of  Books,  but  which  readers  who  have  come  to  dis- 
credit the  dogma  based  upon  its  'misapprehension  have 
come  completely  to  neglect.  But  aside  from  this 
specific  service  in  emphasizing  the  value  as  literature, 
as  poetry,  as  criticism  of  life,  of  the  Bible,  his  religious 
writings  are  also  a  rational,  and  eloquent  exposition  of 
the  attractiveness  of  religion  itself.     He  made  rehgion 

183 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

a  theme,  a  topic,  of  literature.  He  brought  out  its 
general  interest  and  rescued  it  from  the  hands  of  the 
specialist.  He  treated  it  as  properly  a  branch  of  cul- 
ture. He  awakened  in  his  serious  readers  inclined  to 
regard  it  as  negligible  a  certain  dissatisfaction  and 
sense  of  incompleteness. 

Even  in  detail  his  services  to  religion  are  consider- 
able. To  take  a  single  instance:  No  idea  of  modem 
times  has  been  more  fruitful,  in  the  sense  of  forwarding 
the  true,  that  is  to  say  the  spiritual,  interests  of  re- 
ligion than  his  favorite  one  that  the  sole  justification 
of  separatism  is  moral  and  not  doctrinal.  Nothing  has 
more  successfully  warred  against  "  the  communion  of 
the  saints "  than  the  contrary  opinion,  which  may  be 
said  to  be  native  to  Protestantism,  The  Eeformation 
—  "the  real  Eeformation,  the  German  Reformation, 
Luther's  Eeformation,"  as  he  calls  it  —  was,  in  his 
words,  "  a  reaction  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  sense 
against  the  carnal  and  pagan  sense  " ;  it  was  "  a  relig- 
ious revival  like  St.  Francis's."  The  Christian  Church, 
he  says,  is  founded  "  not  on  a  correct  speculative  knowl- 
edge of  the  ideas  of  Paul,  but  on  the  much  surer  ground : 
'  Let  every  one  that  nameth  the  name  of  Christ  depart 
from  iniquity ' ;  and  holding  this  to  be  so,  we  might 
change  the  current  strain  of  doctrinal  theology  from 
one  end  to  the  other,  without,  on  that  account,  setting 
up  any  new  church  or  bringing  in  any  new  religion." 
His  appreciation  of  the  religious  value  of  unity  is  no 
doubt  largely  due  to  his  traditional  feelings  for  the 

184 


MATTHEW  AKNOLD 

Church  of  England  and  his  traditional  antagonism  to 
Nonconformity.  "  The  Evangelicals,"  he  says,  "  have 
not  added  to  their  first  error  of  holding  this  unsound 
body  of  opinions  the  second  error  of  separating  for 
them."  Of  course  his  preoccupation  with  the  Church 
and  the  Nonconformists  in  his  illustrations  and  argu- 
mentation limits  his  pubhc.  It  is  all  rather  aliunde  to 
Americans,  for  example,  even  to  American  Churchmen. 
But  it  is  easy  for  any  reflecting  reader*  to  understand 
his  meaning  in  saying,  for  example,  "  Man  worships 
best  in  common ;  he  philosophizes  best  alone."  And  it 
is  not  difficult  to  seize  the  significance  of  his  central 
idea  that  mere  doctrinal  dififerences  do  not  justify  a 
dissolution  of  that  union  in  which  there  is  strength  as 
much  in  religious  as  in  other  matters  with  which  man's 
moral  nature  is  mainly  concerned  —  patriotism,  for  ex- 
ample, or  the  feeling  for  the  life  of  the  family. 


VI 

The  virtue  of  aU  his  criticism  —  literary,  social  and 
religious  —  is  revealed,  not  to  say  enhanced,  by  the 
limpidity  of  his  style.  It  is  perhaps  a  matter  of  per- 
sonal feeling,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  limpidity  at  least 
suggests,  if  it  does  not  express,  a  shade  of  mor^  positive 
quality  than  is  conveyed  by  clearness.  At  any  rate  in 
noting  the  limpidity  of  Arnold's  style  what  I  have  in 
mind  is  the  medium  rather  than  the  directness  of  his 
expression.     We  know  very  well  nowadays  what  is 

185 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

ordinarily  meant  by  clearness  of  style.  It  is  a  quality 
that  we  owe  to  the  natural  and  one  might  almost  say 
the  involuntary  evolution  accompanying  the  effort  to 
express  ideas  constantly  growing  in  complexity  and 
increasingly  iilvolved  in  their  relations  and  suggestions. 
Mr.  Spencer's  famous  style  is,  as  it  were,  a  weapon 
developed  out  of  the  necessities  of  the  case.  Style  like 
his,  which  is  currently  not  very  uncommon,  is  the  per- 
fection of  what  is  called  "  good  English  "  —  an  instru- 
ment enabling  the  writer  to  convey  his  thought  to  the 
reader  without  losing  any  of  its  energy  on  the  way.  ft 
is  the  opposite  of  such  a  style  as  Mr.  Pater  contrived 
for  himseff,  in  which,  as  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm  observes, 
he  treated  English  "  as  a  dead  language."  Its  charac- 
,  teristic,  however,  is,  equally  with  clearness,  lack  of 
color.  In  this  respect  it  may  almost  be  called  the  ofif- 
hand  style  —  it  is  so  summary,  so  careless  of  perfection 
of  any  kind  save  that  of  adequate  expression,  so  con- 
temptuous of  anything  like  persuasion,  so  superior  to 
ornament,  so  disdainful  of  emotion.  It  is  the  style 
with  which  ill  polemics  Qne  defies  the  reader  to  deny 
and  makes  no  effort  otherwise  to  convince;  and  it  is 
singular  how  it  tends  to  polemics,  how  little  literature 
has  been  written  in  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the  clearness  of  Thack- 
eray, of  whom  Carlyle  says :  "  I  suppose  no  one  in  our 
day  wrote  with  such  perfection  of  style."  Thackeray's 
clearness  is  notably  marked  by  color,  but  it  is  color 
taken  from  the  writer's  personality,  and  except  for  its 

186 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

supreme  quality  of  taste,  seems  the  means  rather  than 
the  medium  of  his  expression  —  no  doubt  the  finest 
effect  producible  by  prose.  Arnold's  clearness,  on  the/ 
contrary,  is  felt  as  an  element  of  technic,  and  has  that* 
quaUty  of  density  which  pleases  as  a  property  of  a  pal- 
pable medium.  It  is  pellucid,  limpid,  f  One  notes  it 
as  he  does  a  certain  clarity  of  tone  in  a  painter's  technic, 
a  certain  explicitness  of  modelling  in  a  sculptor's  touch. 
It  has  the  air  of  being  not  so  much  instinctive  ag» 
arrived  at.  A  great  deal  is  done  with  it.  It  is  elabo- 
rately limpid,  one  may  say.  It  has  a  tincture  of  virtu- 
osity. He  plays  with  it  beautifully,  bringing  out  into 
relief  certain  shadings  and  subduing  certain  others  in 
contrasting  lower-toned  transparencies  —  as  a  pianist  ■ 
of  distinction  not  only  interprets  his  composer  but 
exhibits  his  instrument  at  the  same  time.  In  a  word, 
he  makes  his  lucidity  count  aesthetically.  At  times  he 
grows  over-fond  of  it,  as  is  the  inherent  danger  of  all 
exploitation,  especially  the  sincerest ;  at  times  it  shows 
excess  and  runs  into  a  mannerism  of  iteration  at  whichi 
in  another  Arnold  himself  would  be  the  first  to  wince. 
The  four  times  repeated  "  Scotch  drink,  Scotch  religion, 
and  Scotch  manners,"  within  the  limits  of  a  single  para- 
graph of  his  consideration  of  Bums,  is  "  hard  to  read 
without  a  cry  of  pain,"  as  he  said  of  a  distich  of 
Macaulay.  Less  formally  the  remorselessly  renewed 
appearances  of  "  the  Bishops  of  Winchester  and 
Gloucester"  in  the  beginning  of  "Literature  and 
Dogma"  are  irritating  intrusions.     These  and  similar 

187  ■ 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

instances  are  examples  of  explicitness  run  to  seed. 
But  they  are  the  defect  of  a  quality,  and  due  to  an 
excess  of  a  dilettante  spirit  of  playfulness  to  which  we 
owe  very  much  that  is  acutely  charming  in  Arnold's 
writings.  They  are  not  inherent  in  his  style  at  its 
best.  At  its  best  in  this  respect  of  limpidity  a  page  of 
his  —  a  page  of  "  Literature  and  Dogma  "  itself  —  reads 
like  a  page  of  the  "  Apology,"  in  its  elaborate  and  elevated 
Socratic  clearness. 

To  this  quality  thus  aesthetically  "handled"  he 
adds  an  equally  positive  and  sensible  beauty  of  diction. 
It  is  not  the  beautiful  liquid  flow,  rhythmic,  cadenced 
and  prolonged,  of  Newman's.  But  if  less  sinuous  it 
has  more  strength ;  it  has  greater  poise  and  an  apter 
I  precision.  Compared,  too,  with  the  beauty  of  such 
prose  as  Buskin's,  it  has  a  certain  savor  of  soundness, 
a  sense  of  conscious  subscription  to  what  Buskin  him- 
self, speaking  of  Venetian  architecture,  calls  "  the  iron 
laws  of  beauty" — that  is  to  say,  subscription  to  the 
proprieties  of  prose,  without  pelding  to  the  solicita- 
tions of  the  spirit  of  poetry  which  outside  its  own 
domain  is  sure  to  be  irresponsible  and  indiscreet. 
There  are,  for  example,  many  "  passages "  in  Arnold's 
writing  memorable  for  their  beauty.  Every  one 
remembers  the  apostrophe  to  Oxford.  The  close  of  the 
essay  on  Falkland,  the  description  of  the  Greek  poetry 
of  imaginative  reason  in  the  essay  on  "Pagan  and 
Mediaeval  Beligious  Sentiment,"  the  sentences  of  the 
essay  on  Keats:  "'I   think,'  said  Keats,  humbly,  'I 

188 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

shall  be  among  the  English  poets  after  my  death.'  He 
is.  He  is  with  Shakespeare,"  are  other  examples  of 
sobriety  surcharged  with  feeling  exquisitely  character- 
istic of  the  grave  discretion  proper  to  the  province  of 
prose,  mindful  of  its  limits  as  well  as  conscious  of  its 
capabilities.  And  they  and  others  like  them  are  beau- 
tiful, as  prose  poetry  is  not,  for  the  very  reason  that 
they  are  so  exphcably  founded  in  fitness.  But  his 
diction  in  general  is  noteworthy  for  the  same  quahty. 
It  is  penetrated  with  the  sentiment  of  the  significance 
it  expresses  and  never  self-hypnotizes.  It  is  too 
significant  to  be  "  musical,"  but  its  straightforwardness 
is  very  sensitively  organized.  Its  obvious  elegance  is 
not  the  elegance  of  detachment,  but  is  elegance 
leavened  with  personsil  feeling  —  now  pushed  by  per- 
sonal feeling  to  the  point  of  piquancy,  now  restrained 
within  the  confines  of  mere  suggestion,  but  informed 
by  it  always. 

And  for  the  same  reason  it  is  never  polished  into 
insipidity.     Always  full  of  intention,  it  is  never  style . 
for  its  own  sake.     One  feels  that  the  writer  is  partial 
to  his  style,  that  he  models  it  consciously  and  is  per- 
fectly aware  of  it  as  an  element  of  effectiveness,  but  it^ 
is  the  dress  of  too  much  virility  to  absorb  and  pre- 
occupy, however  much  it  may  interest,   him.     It  is| 
careful  but   it  is  genuine,    high-bred    but   vigorous- 
studied  but  simple,  considered  but  considered  as  form 
merely.     Its  urbanity  is  at  times  a  trifle   express — I 
especially  in  controversy — but  it  is  urbanity  associated 

189  * 


VICTORIAN   PROSE   MASTERS 

with  too  much  point  ever  to  be  mistaken  for  appro- 
bativeness.  It  is  obviously  the  style  of  a  writer  who 
adds  to  their  lustre  in  maintaining  the  traditions. 
"Suckled  on  Latin  and  weaned  on  Greek,"  some  one 
asserted  of  Dr.  Arnold's  children,  and  the  classic  strain 
is  naturally  distinguishable  enough  in  Matthew 
Arnold's  style — in  its  stuff  as  well  as  in  its  syntax. 
But  it  is  not  in  the  least  academic — it  is  too  modern, 
too  flexible,  too  much  the  offspring  of  English  parent- 
age. Its  vocabulary  is  less  remarkable  for  range  than 
for  felicity ;  in  felicity  it  is  as  remarkable  as  Tenny- 
son's ;  indeed  with  equal  aptness — equal  Justesse — its 
felicity  is  even  more  marked  than  Tennyson's,  because 
it  is  more  instinctive,  and  instinctiveness  is  a  con- 
stituent of  felicity.  Neither  is  felicity  confined  to  his 
vocabulary.     His  phrases  are  famous. 

This  combination  of  limpidity,  beauty  and  culture, 
consciously  co-operating  in  the  production  of  an  ex- 
plicit medium,  exploited  rather  than  dissembled,  has 
for  its  notablest  result  perhaps  the  circumstance  that 
Arnold's  style  is,  as  style,  the  most  interesting  of  any 
of  the  writers  of  our  day.  I  say  as  style,  because 
though  I  think  Thackeray's  surpasses  it  in  interest,  it 
does  so  in  virtue  of  the  inimitable  color  of  a  more 
interesting  and  omnipresent  personality.  Thackeray's 
apart,  at  all  events,  there  is  no  other  that  in  respect  of 
interest  approaches  Arnold's  if  we  take  his  writings  in 
the  mass.  His  writings  taken  in  the  mass  gain  im- 
mensely from  their  style.     Interesting  as  his  substance 

190 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

is,  it  would  be  distinctly  less  so  but  for  the  art  of  its 
presentation.  One  has  only  to  think  of  any  of  his 
books  written  otherwise  to  feel  at  once  that  it  would 
be  less  captivating.  By  interest,  of  course,  I  mean  the 
feeling  that  is  stimulated  by  what  is  admirable,  interest 
within  lines  of  laudability,  an  artistic  interest,  in  a 
word — not  the  thrill  aroused  by  dithyramb,  or  eccen- 
tricity, or  picturesqueness,  or  any  of  the  various  forms 
of  rhetoric  wliich  often  create  an  effect  whose  intensity 
is  altogether  disproportionate  to  its  duration.  In  any 
theme  of  Arnold's  one  is  interested  in  how  he  takes  it, 
how  it  is  conceived,  exhibited,  enforced,  in  the  way  in 
which  its  own  intrinsic  interest  is  unfolded,  in  the 
adaptation  itself  of  the  means  to  the  end.  It  is  not 
"the  grand  style."  As  he  says,  the  grand  style  is  to 
be  found  only  in  poetry,  and  to  my  sense  he  is  not  a 
great  poet.  But  he  has  the  style,  if  not  of  a  great 
writer,  at  least  of  an  admirable,  a  unique,  literary 
artist. 

VII 

It  is  frequently  and  truly  remarked  of  Arnold's 
poetry  that  it  never  can  be  popular.  But  this  is  not 
because  there  is  anything  particularly  esoteric  about 
it,  and  the  assumption  that  it  appeals  particularly  to 
the  elect  is  largely  unfounded.  It  is,  at  all  events, 
better  than  that.  It  is  not  in  any  exclusive  sense  that 
Mr.  Lang  and  Mr,  Augustine  Birrell  find  it  intimately 
consoling.     Others  enjoy  it  in  the  same  way,  though, 

191 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

of  course,  whether  or  no  in  the  same  degree  it  would  be 
impossible  to  determine.  But  it  is  poetry  that  never 
can  be  popular  because  it  appeals  to  moods  that  are 
infrequent.  It  is  intimately  consoling  if  you  are  in  a 
mood  that  needs  consolation,  and  consolation  of  a 
severely  stoic  strain,  i  Otherwise^  it  is  not.  Now,  most 
people  are  either  rarely  in  such,  a  mood,  or,  when  they 
are,  demand  consolation  that  stimulates  instead  of 
stifling  their  self-pity.  The  poetry,  like  the  music,  that 
intensifies  one's  mood  is  inevitably  more  popular  than 
that  which  contradicts  it.  /  And,  of  course,  the  stoical 
mood  being  far  rarer  than  the  sensuous,  sensuous  poetry 
will  always  be  surer  of  a  welcome  than  stoical.  It 
makes  a  slighter  demand  on  the  faculties,  and  whatever 
requires  effort  is  proportionally  unwelcome.  "  Stanzas 
written  in  dejection  near  Naples,"  or  near  anywhere 
else,  please  us,  because  savoring  them  involves  no  ten- 
sion. A  passionate  lyric  of  Byron  or  a  plaintive  one 
of  Keats  finds  us  much  more  readily  responsive  than 
Arnold's  austere  verses  on  "  Self-dependence,"  which 
invoke  an  energy  that  in  most  men  is  at  best  inter- 
mittent. For  this  reason  his  plaintive,  or,  if  one 
chooses,  his  pessimistic,  strain,  is  more  moving  to  most 
readers  than  his  stimulant  and  inspiring  note.  The 
lines  beginning :  "  Strew  on  her  roses,  roses,"  in  spite 
of  their  rather  tame  conclusion,  the  intimately  pathetic 
quatrain  beginning :  "  What  renders  vain  their  deep 
desire,"  the  first  part  of  "  Rugby  Chapel,"  with  its 
deepening  shadows  and  enshrouding  gloom,  will  always 

192 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

be  favorites  over  those  of  his  poems  that  celebrate  the 
activities  of  the  will.  Yet  the  latter  are  the  more 
numerous  and  by  far  the  more  characteristic. 

I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  the  militant  mood  is 
less  prevalent  to-day  than  the  purely  receptive  one,  so 
far  as  regards  the  appreciation  of  poetry.  Verse  like 
Scott's  "One  crowded  hour  of  glorious  life,"  would 
awaken  the  same  thrill,  perhaps,  as  ever,  if  there  were 
any  of  it.  Browning's  popularity  is,  indeed,  probably 
growing.  But  this  is  a  mood  to  which  Arnold  never 
appeals.  His  poetry  is  in  the  mass  addressed  to  the 
mood  of  moral  elevation,  and  it  would  be  fatuity  to  con- 
tend that  this  is  a  frequent  frame  of  mind.  For  the 
most  part  we  come  to  the  reading  of  poetry  in  an  un- 
moral mood.  We  respond  to  the  aesthetic  appeal  a 
thousand  times  more  readily  than  to  the  moral.  How 
many  readers  would  agree  with  Arnold  in  preferring 
the  "  Ode  to  Duty "  to  that  on  the  "  Intimations  of 
Immortality  "  ?  His  argument  is  unimpeachable.  The 
former  is  sound,  the  latter  fantastic.  But  are  we  often 
in  a  mood  to  be  as  thrilled  by  the  lines, 

"Nor  knowVe  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  thy  face," 

as  we  are  by  the  images  and  cadences  of  the  certainly 
more  popular  poem  ?  There  are  certainly  times  in 
which  simply  to  be  good  seems  the  one  thing  worth 
striving  for  to,  no  doubt,  the  worst  of  us.  There  are 
moments  when  the  will  welcomes  the  mastery  of  virtue 

193 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

and  solicits  fusion  with  the  good  in  absolute  self- 
surrender —  moments  when  the  heart  is  touched  with 
fire  from  the  altar  of  rectitude,  and  the  sweetness  and 
joy  of  being  at  one  with  the  most  vital  principle  in  the 
universe  flood  the  soul  with  balm.  It  is  the  ideal,  not 
of  poetry,  but  of  religion,  however,  to  multiply  such 
moments  and  render  permanent  this  transitory  condi- 
tion. And  though,  as  Arnold  says,  "  the  best  part  of 
religion  is  its  unconscious  poetry,"  its  unconscious  religion 
is  but  a  small  part  of  poetry,  speaking  comparatively, 
and  in  Arnold's  poetry  there  is  nothing  unconscious  at 
all.  It  is  extremely  express ;  and,  although  to  say  so 
is  not  to  deny  that  it  is  genuine,  its  genuineness  takes 
a  clearly  calculated  form.  It  must  dispense  with  the 
aid  of  that  unconscious  religion  which  animates  Words- 
worth, even  when  he  is  doctoral  and  dogmatic.  His 
popular  appeal  is,  therefore,  still  more  limited  than 
Wordsworth's  because  his  inspiration,  though  morally 
elevated,  like  Wordsworth's,  is  restricted  within  the 
confines  of  intellectual  intention  and  lacks  the  self- 
abandonment  to  transfigured  impulse  which  Wordsworth 
eminently  shows  to  be  as  much  within  the  province  of 
morally  elevated  poetry  as  of  any  other.  It  lacks  exal- 
tation. Moreover,  it  lacks  the  exultant  quality  which 
Arnold  himself  signalizes  as  Wordsworth's  true  great- 
ness —  "  the  joy  offered  to  us  in  nature,  the  joy  offered 
to  us  in  the  simple  primary  affections  and  duties."  It 
is  never  joyous  ;  joyousness  is  the  one  quality  above  all 
others  which  it  never  has. 

194 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

On  its  aesthetic  side,  too,  its  reliances  are  few.  In 
the  mass  it  is  unmusical  —  at  least  in  the  sense  of  being 
independent  of  music  as  a  reliance.  It  is  absurd  to 
find  it  cacophonous,  as  is  sometimes  asserted,  and  to 
maintain  that  its  author  had  no  ear  —  though,  perhaps, 
had  his  ear  been  more  sensitive  he  would  not  have  cited 
Keats's  "  peaceful  citadel "  as  "  quiet  citadel."  There 
are  metres  which  he  handled  with  instinctive  felicity — 
witness  "Heine's  Grave,"  "Eugby  Chapel,"  "A  For- 
saken Merman."  But  they  are  not,  so  to  say,  musical 
metres.  His  repugnance  to  balladry,  his  recoil  from 
sing-song,  his  partisanship  for  the  hexameter,  are  sig- 
nificant. His  feehng  for  the  slower  vibrations  of 
rhythm  in  the  citations  he  holds  up  as  models  almost 
indicates  a  preference  for  intonation  to  song.  Quoting 
Gray's  statement  that  "  the  style  he  aimed  at  was  ex- 
treme conciseness  of  expression,  yet  pure,  perspicuous 
and  musical,"  he  says  that  Gray  is  "  alone  or  almost 
alone  (for  Collins  has  something  of  the  like  merit)  in 
his  age."  Compare  with  this  the  celebration  of  Collins 
by  Air.  Swinburne,  who  is  a  master  of  music  in  poetry, 
whose  verse  is  often  music  et  prceterea  nihil :  "  There 
was  but  one  man  in  the  time  of  Collins  who  had  in  him 
a  note  of  pure  lyric  song,  a  pulse  of  inborn  music  irre* 
sistible  and  indubitable ;  and  that  he  was  that  man  he 
could  not  open  his  lips  without  giving  positive  and 
instant  proof.  The  Muse  gave  birth  to  Collins ;  she 
did  but  give  suck  to  Gray."  An  examination  of  Arnold's 
poetry  would  show  many  musical  lines,  sometimes  a 

195 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

happy  note  like  a  sudden  bird  call,  a  thrilling  dactyl,  a 
tetrasyllable  of  liquid  cadence  enforced  by  appositeness 
recalling  Keats  himself.  But  at  the  same  time  these 
are  elbowed  by  awkwardnesses  of  scansion,  eccentricities 
of  ictus,  and  now  and  then  a  positive  cessation  of  lyric 
tone  as  though  in  obedience  to  the  rubric  "  spoken." 

Poetic  quality,  too,  is  sometimes  as  lacking  as  musi- 
cal. The  two  are  certainly  to  be  distinguished,  and 
Arnold's  verse  is  far  more  rarely  unpoetic  than  it  is 
unmusical.  But  of  course  poetry  that  has  not  a  musi- 
cal interpretation  falls  just  so  far  short  of  being  poet- 
ically perfect.  Dispensing  with  the  reliance  of  rhyth- 
mic feUcity  it  is  necessarily  thrown  back  more  or  less 
boldly  on  the  unaided  poetic  value  of  its  substance, 
and  a  formal  rather  than  magical  expression  of  it. 
Aside  from  this  so  far  as  its  lack  of  poetic  quality  is  to 
be  felt  as  a  shortcoming  in  Arnold's  poetry,  it  is  due, 
I  think,  to  the  fact  that  his  pursuit  of  the  IMuse  is  a 
shade  systematic.  The  turn  for  criticism,  which  is  an 
integral  part  of  his  genius,  gives  it  a  theoretic  tincture, 
at  the  least.  He  thought  a  great  deal  about  poetry, 
about  what  it  should  be,  what  line  it  should  take,  what 
inspiration  the  poets  of  the  future  should  seek.  No 
one  has  written  more  acutely  or  more  fruitfully  about 
it.  But  at  the  same  time  it,  perhaps  naturally,  fol- 
lowed that  when  he  came  himself  to  illustrate  his 
principles  he  was  preoccupied  with  their  application  in 
a  degree  that  modified  his  possession  by  his  theme. 
He  was  conscious  of  his  art  instead  of  absorbed  in  his 

196 


MATTHEW  AKNOLD 

subject,  vrith  the  natural  result  now  and  then  of  polish- 
ing his  poetry  into  prose  instead  of  "letting  it  model 
itseK,"  as  a  painter  would  say,  under  the  guidance  of 
his  tact. 

In  the  suggestive  "  Prefaces "  to  the  first  and  sec- 
ond editions  of  his  poems,  he  lays  down  a  number  of 
poetical  requirements  with  the  utmost  penetration. 
Among  others  he  emphasizes  "the  all-importance  of 
the  choice  of  a  subject,"  and  he  indicates  what  in  a 
general  way  that  choice  should  be.  ISTotliing  could  be 
better.  But  practically  the  consequence  of  a  poet's 
specific  reflection  upon  the  choice  of  a  subject  is  not 
such  a  work  as  the  "  Antigone,"  or  any  of  the  Greek 
models  Mr.  Arnold  is  recommending.  It  is  not  such  a 
poem  as  "In  Memoriam,"  or,  to  take  a  crucial  in- 
stance, "  The  Eing  and  the  Book."  It  is  such  a  poem 
as  "  Sohrab  and  Eustum."  "  Sohrab  and  Eustum  "  is 
a  beautiful  and,  at  the  climax,  a  moving  poem.  But 
as  a  whole  it  has  a  fatal  lack  of  spontaneity.  The 
choice  of  the  subject  has  been  too  carefully  made  and 
the  treatment  is  too  theoretic.  It  is  not  personal  and 
romantic  enough.  Its  romance  and  individuality  of 
treatment  are  too  tranquilly  contained  within  the 
limits  of  the  form,  and  the  form  is  an  exotic.  It  is 
not  that  it  is  artificial.  Tennyson  is  artificial.  But 
Tennyson  can  be  personal  without  ceasing  to  be  even 
conventional.  His  artificiality  is  a  natural  expression. 
He  is  not  hampered  by  liis  significance,  which  he 
handles  in  high  differentiation  as  easily  as  if  it  were 

197 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

even  less  significant  than  —  owing  to  its  universal 
acceptance — it  often  is.  A  poet,  however,  who  is  first 
of  all  a  thinker,  needs  to  give  his  feeling  a  freer  rein 
and,  whatever  his  theories  about  poetry  in  general, 
forget  their  ajiplication  in  his  specific  effort  for  ade- 
quately poetic  statement. 

Arnold's  poetry  is,  at  all  events,  penetrated  with 
thought,  and  this  forms  its  true  distinction.  It  is  in- 
deed the  fulness  of  its  significance  that  embarrasses  its 
expression  both  in  musical  and  in  more  subtly  poetic 
form.  Of  course,  had  his  genius  possessed  either  what 
he  himself  calls  the  "  natural  magic  "  of  the  Celt  or  the 
"Greek  radiance"  it  would  have  carried  his  thought 
more  easily.  But  it  is  a  reflective  and  philosophic 
genius,  and  accordingly  its  sincerest  poetical  expression 
savors  a  little  of  statement  rather  than  of  song.  And 
to  endue  statement  with  poetic  quality  a  more  inevi- 
table and  exclusive  poetic  vocation  than  his  is  requisite. 
He  does,  it  is  true,  suffuse  it  with  feeling,  but  with 
feeling  whose  pertinence  and  poise  are  perhaps  a  little 
too  prominently  irreproachable.  "  Genius  is  mainly  an 
affair  of  energy,  and  poetry  is  mainly  an  affair  of  ge- 
nius," he  says  very  truly,  and  it  is,  in  the  last  analysis, 
probably  energy  that  his  poetry  lacks  to  give  it  greater 
currency  and  greater  charm.  Around  greater  energy 
his  numbers  would  crystallize  in  more  eloquent,  more 
moving  combination.  They  would  have  more  buoy- 
ancy, more  freedom,  a  larger  sweep,  a  more  sustained 
flight.      For  this   reason   the  narrative   and  dramatic 

198 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

poems  have  less  attraction  than  the  elegiac  and  lyric, 
and  for  this  reason  even  the  lyric  poems  are  contem- 
plative rather  than  impassioned.  It  would  hardly  be 
amiss  to  call  some  of  his  verse  cogent. 

But,  as  I  say,  its  penetration  with  significance  forms 
its  true  distinction,  and  if  his  energy  is  insufficient  to 
rank  him  in  poetic  quality  with  the  "born  poets"  of 
his  calibre,  nevertheless  the  quality  of  his  thought 
establishes  such  a  balance  in  his  poetic  gifts  and  ac- 
quirements that  his  poetry,  taken  as  a  whole,  gives 
him  an  honorable  and  a  unique  place  in  their  company. 
It  is  not  fatuity  that  makes  him  say  that  "  with  less 
poetical  sentiment  than  Tennyson  and  less  intellectual 
vigor  and  abundance  than  Browning  "  his  poetry  has 
"perhaps  more  of  a  fusion  of  the  two  than  either  of 
them."  And  it  has  the  great  advantage  of  being,  so 
far  as  its  characteristic  quality  of  thought  is  concerned, 
admirably  representative  of  the  combined  thought  and 
feeling  of  the  era.  Our  generation  probably  atones 
somewhat  for  feeling  less  simply,  less  strenuously  than 
the  last,  by  attuning  its  feeling  more  closely  to  its 
thinking;  and  perhaps  the  next  will  witness  such 
interest  in  new  complications  of  thinking,  born  of  in- 
creased multifariousness  of  phenomena  for  its  exercise, 
that  feeling  will  become  still  less  agitated  and  inde- 
pendent than  it  is  to-day. 

And  of  feeling  that  is  legitimated  by  the  tribunal 
of  reason,  Arnold  is  the  poet  jpar  excellence.  His  at- 
tempts to  illustrate  the  theories  of  his  "  Prefaces  "  may 

199 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

be  in  foriii  too  conscious,  too  much  an  echo  of  the 
models  he  holds  up,  but  in  feeling  his  poetry  is  in  the 
main  the  personal  expression  of  a  poet  who  is  genu- 
inely a  follower  and  not  an  imitator  of  the  poets  of 
that  "  century  in  Greek  life,"  to  quote  his  own  words 
"  —  the  century  preceding  the  Peloponnesian  war,  from 
about  the  year  530  to  the  year  430  B.C. — in  which 
poetry  made,  it  seems  to  me,  the  noblest,  the  most  suc- 
cessful effort  she  has  yet  made  as  the  priestess  of  the 
imaginative  reason,  of  the  element  by  which  the  mod- 
ern spirit,  if  it  would  live  riglit,  has  chiefly  to  live." 
His  inspiration  is  certainly  what  he  calls  "  the  imagi- 
native reason,"  neither  "  the  senses  and  the  understand- 
ing "  by  which  he  says  the  poetry  of  later  paganism 
lived,  nor  "  the  heart  and  the  imagination "  of  the 
poetry  of  medieval  Christianity.  One  may  say  that 
his  reason  a  little  overbalances  his  imagination,  but  it 
is  certainly  true  that  his  imagination  in  the  very  cir- 
cumstance of  being  thus  solidly  sustained  not  only 
avoids  the  weakness  of  insubstantiality,  but  operates 
positively  with  increased  eloquence  and  elasticity  be- 
cause it  is  the  servant  only  of  that  reason  whose  ser- 
vice is  perfect  freedom.  An  elementary  is  as  good  as 
a  recondite  illustration.  Take,  for  example,  the  way 
in  which  such  a  theme  as  immortality  is  treated  by  a 
poet  purely  of  the  heart,  like  Whittier,  in  the  lines : 

"Yet  Love  will  dream,  and  Faith  will  trust 
(Since  He  who  knows  our  need  is  just) 
That  somehow,  somewhere,  meet  we  must." 
200 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

The  lines  are  true  poetry,  and,  taken  with  their  context, 
they  are  touching ;  no  one  with  memories  can  be  unre- 
sponsive to  them.  But  they  are  no  longer  convincing, 
because  their  basis  is  insubstantial.  Compare  with 
them  this  stanza  of  Arnold's  from  "  Eugby  Chapel," 
and  its  context : 

"  0  strong  soul,  by  what  shore 
Tarriest  thou  now  1    For  that  force, 
Surely,  has  not  been  left  vain ! 
Somewhere,  surely,  afar, 
In  the  sounding  labor-house  vast 
Of  being,  is  practised  that  strength, 
Zealous,  beneficent,  firm." 

Here  we  are  in  the  world  of  reason.  We  are  still 
among  assumptions,  no  doubt,  but  we  have  exchanged 
pure  sentiment  for  poetic  speculation,  and  a  conven- 
tional for  an  imaginative  treatment.     Arnold  goes  on : 

"  Yes,  in  some  far-shining  sphere, 
Conscious  or  not  of  the  past, —  " 

He  will  be  betrayed  into  no  claim,  in  the  region  of 
the  unverifiable,  which  reason  would  not,  in  recognizing 
its  own  limits,  acquiesce  in  as  properly  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  imagination.  Thus  the  reader  of 
Arnold's  poetry  never  has  to  say  to  himself :  "  But  it 
is  not  true ! "  And  to  the  sense  of  our  own  day  this  is 
fundamental  in  poetry  as  elsewhere. 

201 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

And  not  only  does  his  poetry  satisfy  because  it  is 
sound  without  being  conventional,  but  truth  is  posi- 
tively its  inspiration  as  well  as  its  guide.  It  is  truth 
that  stirs  his  imagination.  It  is  the  divination  of  some 
broad  or  subtle  verity  of  the  soul,  seized  by  his  delicate 
apprehension,  that  suggests  its  poetic  inference  to  his 
imagination,  sets  it  aglow  with  light  and  suffuses  it 
with  elevated  feeling.  '  The  experience  of  the  soul  amid 
the  phenomena  among  which  in  our  complicated  era  it 
passes  its  existence  —  its  moments  of  gloom,  of  aspira- 
tion, its  disillusions,  its  yearning  sadness,  its  sense  of 
the  hea\y  burden  of  clairvoyance,  and  the  withdrawal 
of  old  solaces  and  supports,  its  wistful  glances  into  the 
penumbra  of  the  verifiable,  and  its  tragic  certitude  of 
seeing,  in  the  sphere  of  attainment,  the  ideal  decline 
in  compromise  —  these  and  similar  phases  of  the  spirit- 
ual life  of  our  time  have  found  expression  in  Arnold's 
poetry  as  they  have  nowhere  else.  And  their  expression 
has  been  not  only  true,  but  truly  imaginative.  He 
was  quite  right.  He  occupies  a  place  by  himself.  He 
inhabits  the  serene  uplands  of  poetic  thought,  where 
the  mind  and  the  soul  receive,  at  least  at  intervals,  a 
stimulant  sustenance,  however  rarefied  the  atmosphere 
may  seem  to  the  quite  otherwise  exigent  demands  of 
that  aesthetic  sense  whose  activity  is  less  intermittent. 


202 


EUSKIN 


EUSKIN 


Etjskin  left  his  interesting  "  Autobiography "  unfin- 
ished, but  otherwise  his  life-work  was  substantially 
complete  long  ago ;  the  main  interest  of  the  "  Autobi- 
ography," in  fact,  is  that  it  is  a  discursive  commentary 
on  this  life-work  already  rounded  and  already  a  public 
possession.  He  was  born  in  1819,  the  son  of  a  rich 
wine  merchant,  and  was  graduated  at  Christ  Church 
College,  Oxford,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  receiving  the 
Newdigate  prize  for  poetry.  It  is  a  great  pity  in  many 
ways  that  he  did  not  accept  this  good  fortune  as  an 
omen,  and  consecrate  himself  thenceforth  to  the  service 
of  the  Muses.  He  was  certainly  a  bom  poet,  but  he 
abandoned  poetry  for  prose  at  his  graduation,  and 
never  seriously  returned  to  it.  He  was  soon  heard 
from  in  a  work  pubHshed  anonymously  as  by  "  An  Ox- 
ford Graduate,"  and  destined  to  become  speedily  famous, 
first  for  its  style,  and  second  for  its  ideas.  The  style 
was  absolutely  novel ;  it  was  in  an  exceptional  degree 
"  the  man " ;  it  was  the  prose  of  a  true  poet,  and  at 
once  took  rank  as  the  first  of  that  product  of  unre- 
strained genius  known  as  "  prose  poetry."  The  ideas 
were  equally  novel.     They  were  subversive  of  accepted 

205 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

commonplaces,  fanatically  professed  articles  of  a  new 
faith,  and  characterized  by  an  ingrained  contentious- 
ness. All  Kuskiu  is  in  the  "  Modern  Painters,"  which, 
as  every  one  knows,  was  an  eloquent  and  fervid  glorifi- 
cation of  landscape  and  of  the  superior  way  in  which  it 
had  been  painted  by  certain  English  painters  of  the 
present  era,  notably  Turner  —  mirabile  dictu,  who  sys- 
tematically violated  every  article  of  the  Ruskin  creed  — 
compared  with  its  insufficient  treatment  by  the  old 
masters.  The  five  volumes  of  this  surprising  work 
revolutionized  English  feeling  on  the  subject  with 
which  they  dealt.  It  may  safely  be  asserted  that  no 
writer  ever  "  made "  a  man  as  Ruskin  did  Turner. 
Plato  did  less  for  Socrates. 

From  that  time  on  every  work  of  the  new  author 
was  greeted  with  applause  and  read  with  avidity,  ffis 
activity  branched  out  into  a  dozen  different  directions. 
His  publications  were  on  the  most  discordant  subjects. 
Church  government  and  discipline,  political  economy, 
the  complexities  of  modern  life,  as  well  as  nature  and 
fine  art,  were  discussed  by  him  with  equal  ardor  and 
authoritative  tone.  To  say  he  was  equally  at  home  upon 
them  all  would  be  to  claim  a  universality  and  compre- 
hensiveness of  mind  which  he  not  only  certainly  did 
not  possess,  but,  contrariwise,  most  conspicuously  lacked. 
But  he  endued  them  all  with  a  very  nearly  even  interest 
by  his  strenuous  personality,  his  extraordinary  intensity. 
The  record  and  critique  of  these  works  comprise  the 
history  of  his  life,  which  was  otherwise  uneventful. 

206 


RUSKIN 

The  interest  of  his  "  Autobiography  "  is  purely  subjec- 
tive —  too  much  so  for  so  elaborate  a  work ;  no  man's 
spiritual  development  can  be  so  valuable  to  others  as  the 
scale  of  the  "  Autobiography  "  imphes. 

He  was  early  married,  but  allowed  his  wife  lo  obtain 
a  divorce  from  him  in  order  to  marry  the  painter  with 
whom  she  had  fallen  in  love,  whose  work  also  he  began 
forthwith  to  eulogize  with  his  customary  eloquence. 
The  incident  illustrates  his  intensity  and  lack  of  poise ; 
in  the  pursuit  of  saintliness,  measure  had  no  interest 
for  him.  So  far  as  material  circumstances  are  con- 
cerned, he  ordered  his  life  as  he  would.  With  his 
genius,  his  tastes  and  his  equipment,  what  he  might 
have  made  of  it  is  imaginatively  quite  as  impressive  as 
what  he  did.  He  inherited  great  wealth ;  his  literary 
gains  were  among  the  greatest  of  modern  times  ;  he 
accumulated  great  treasures :  and  he  died  poor,  having 
dissipated  his  whole  substance  designedly  in  the  service 
and  for  the  benefit  of  his  fellow-men.  To  note  the 
quixotism  of  his  benevolence  would  be  ungracious,  were 
it  not  so  strikingly  the  counterpart  of  the  quixotism  of 
his  mind  as  to  mark  the  singleness  of  his  nature.  His 
unselfishness  was  as  notable  as  his  self-will.  He  payait 
de  sapersonne  ;  he  gave  everything,  himself  included  —  a 
procedure  that,  if  not  in  every  respect  exemplary,  is  at 
any  rate  too  exceptional  to  excite  the  uneasiness  of 
even  the  wise  and  prudent.  It  is  not,  however,  the 
way  either  to  influence  one's  future  fellow-men  or  to 
raise  to  one's  self  a  literary  monument  perenniiis  cere. 

207 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

He  was  twice  elected  Slade  Professor  of  Poetry  at  Ox- 
ford. He  founded  the  St.  George  Society  —  a  kind 
of  community  in  which,  in  accordance  with  his  views 
of  private  life  and  political  economy,  human  nature 
was  to  be  ennobled  by  manual  labor  and  eschewing 
manufactured  articles.  One  wonders  if  he  had  ever 
read  "  The  Blithedale  Eomance."  He  took  a  great 
interest  in  workingmen,  and  for  several  years  published 
a  journal  for  them  with  the  edifying  title  "  Fors  Cla- 
vigera,"  Much  of  his  life  was  passed  on  the  Continent, 
where  he  made  long  and  elaborate  examinations  of  the 
monuments  of  plastic  art  there.  Of  his  works,  besides 
"  Modern  Painters,"  the  most  celebrated  and  the  most 
useful  are  the  results  of  his  travel  and  residence  in 
Italy  and  France.  "  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture  " 
and  "  The  Stones  of  Venice,"  with  the  "  Modern 
Painters,"  probably  comprise  all  of  his  product  that  will 
last  through  the  epoch  of  indifference  to  much  that  the 
present  age  has  delighted  in,  which  we  can  readily  per- 
ceive to  be  already  upon  us.  Beautiful  fragments,  bits 
of  real  literature  such  as  are  worthily  called  gems  — 
"  The  Ethics  of  the  Dust,"  for  instance,  and  "  Sesame 
and  Lilies "  —  will  undoubtedly  pass  into  the  literary 
limbo  of  the  future  because  of  their  lack  of  substance. 
As  Carlyle  said  long  ago,  "  everything  not  made  of 
asbestos  is  going  to  be  burned."  There  is,  even  in  a 
purely  literary  sense,  exceedingly  little  "  asbestos "  to 
be  found  in  the  sum  of  Mr.  Euskin's  works. 


208 


RUSKIN 


II 


It  is  not,  indeed,  hazardous  to  venture  the  prophecy 
that  posterity  will  find  his  writings  lacking  in  form  as 
to  style,  and  lacking  in  substance  as  to  matter.  He 
was  to  an  extraordinary  degree  a  pure  sentimentalist, 
and  there  are  many  signs  that  the  day  of  the  pure 
sentimentalists  is  over.  He  was  not,  in  fact,  of  his 
own  time.  He  made  a  great  impress  upon  it,  it  is  true. 
He  not  only  revolutionized  the  state  of  feeling  in 
regard  to  fine  art  in  England,  did  wonders  both  for 
the  awakening  of  the  humdrum,  the  matter-of-fact  and 
the  philistine  element  of  English  society  to  the  vital 
truth  and  real  beauty  of  art,  and  against  the  conven- 
tionality theretofore  accepted  as  artistic  beauty  and 
truth  —  he  made  a  very  deep  moral  impression  upon 
many  serious  minds,  who  still  regard  him  (such  is  the 
chaotic  condition  of  our  culture)  as  an  evangelist 
rather  than  as  a  mere  writer  upon  fine  art.  This  is 
the  way  in  which  he  wished  to  be  regarded;  and  he 
expressly  regrets  having  wasted  so  much  force  upon 
aesthetics  which  he  might  else  have  devoted  to  morals 
and  politics. 

But  his  success  in  all  these  regards  was,  as  we  can 
now  see,  due  to  special  causes,  and  consequently  ephem- 
eral. He  was  of  his  time  only  in  representing  the 
reactionary  feeling  common  to  all  epochs.  He  was,  as 
it  were,  flung  off  by  one  of  those  occasional  excesses  of 
the  centrifugal  motion  of  a  period.     To  the  weary  he 

209 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

was  consoling;  he  soothed  the  despondent;  he  grate- 
fully flattered  the  disgusted,  the  unsuccessful,  those 
who  felt  themselves  out  of  harmony  with  the  way  the 
world  was  going.  There  are  always  such  persons,  and 
consolation  for  them  is  always  developed,  and  in  this 
sense  Euskin's  message  to  them  may  be  called  a 
natural  evolution,  especially  as  they  were  particularly 
numerous  and  particularly  in  need  of  consolation  at  the 
beginning  of  our  industrial  era.  But  representative  of 
the  best  spirit,  of  the  courage  and  the  faith  of  his  time, 
Ruskin  certainly  was  not.  There  is  more  of  this  to 
be  found  in  Byron  —  where,  indeed,  there  is  a  great  deal 
of  it  to  be  found,  by  the  way. 

'  The  best  spirit,  the  faith  and  courage  of  tliis  or  any 
other  time,  must  be  interpreted  from  a  standpoint  that 
recognizes  and  does  not  flout  its  unalterable  conditions. 
In  any  other  position  one  does  but  beat  the  air.  There 
is  more  stimulus  in  Carlyle's  single  epithet  "  Captains 
of  Industry"  than  in  all  Ruskin.  The  most  elemen- 
tary utility  would  dictate  on  the  one  hand  the  rational- 
ization of  the  optimism  which  prevailed  perhaps  more 
widely  in  Euskin's  day  than  at  present,  and  on  the 
other  the  winnowing  of  the  chaS"  of  decadence  from 
the  grain  of  potential  germination  that  certainly  never 
existed  in  such  profusion  as  it  does  to-day.  The  means 
by  which  "joy"  is  "in  widest  commonalty  spread" 
were  never  so  numerous  or  so  efficient.  The  develop- 
ment of  the  social  unit  has  never  reached  so  high  a 
point,  and  the  possible  achievements  of  social  co-opera- 

210 


RUSKIN 

tion  have  never  seemed  so  nearly  attainable.  Erudition 
was  never  carried  so  far  nor  education  so  broadly  dis- 
seminated. Faith  was  never  so  completely  divorced 
from  superstition  nor  morals  so  nearly  automatic. 
Well-being  was  never  so  nearly  universal  nor  opportu- 
nity so  opulently  abundant.  And  —  what  is  not  suffi- 
ciently borne  in  mind — criticism  has  for  the  first  time 
become  a  powerful  controlling,  constructive  and  cor- 
rective force.  In  a  word,  the  "note"  of  the  time  is 
expansion,  development,  exercise  of  one's  faculties. 
"With  the  material  side  of  this  we  are  all  familiar,  of 
course.  Its  spiritual  side  has  since  Goethe  been 
marked  by  a  turning  toward  mind  rather  than  toward 
sentiment.  The  higher  reaches  henceforth  are  found 
unsatisfactory  if  they  are  pervaded  merely  or  chiefly 
by  emotion.  In  this  sense  Euskin  is  altogether  medi- 
aeval. 

Now  nineteenth-century  mediaevahsm  is  not  only  a 
paradox,  but  the  next  thing  to  an  impossibihty.  In- 
deed— although  if  obliged  to  sum  up  in  one  word  what 
seems  to  me  the  vice  of  Euskin's  gospel,  I  should  say 
its  mediae valism — such  is  the  perverse  irony  of  the 
nature  of  things  that  Euskin  himself  is  lacking  in  cer- 
tain of  the  most  important  characteristics  of  the  medi- 
aeval spirit  —  simplicity  and  humility,  for  instance. 
There  are  most  assuredly  traits  of  medisevalism  that 
are  of  perennial  value — vide  Carlyle's  "  Past  and  Pres- 
ent," passim.  But  to  preach  them  successfully  one 
must  be  not  merely  fanatical,  but  simple ;  not  merely 

211 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

eloquent,  but  persuasive.  "Carlyle  and  I  only  are 
left,"  observed  Ruskin  once.  The  association  is  absurd. 
It  reminds  one  of  the  association  sometimes  made  of 
Carlyle  and  Coleridge,  with  whom  Ruskin  had  a  far 
greater  affinity.  It  has  been  brilliantly  remarked  of 
Coleridge  that  he  "  had  no  morals,"  and  in  the  same 
way  Ruskin  can  be  said  to  have  had  convictions  only 
by  extension.  He  was  absurdly  mercurial,  which 
means  of  course  that  his  convictions  did  not  really 
convince  him.  Terribly  self-conscious  in  everything 
else,  he  was  perfectly  unconscious  in  his  ignorance  of 
this.  He  was,  no  doubt,  thoroughly  sincere  in  fancy- 
ing his  intensity  of  emotion  a  mark  of  reality  of  con- 
viction, which,  as  an  analytic  age  has  discovered,  it  is 
very  far  from  being.  His  passion  for  formulating  his 
paradoxes,  organizing  his  whimsies,  making  a  credo  of 
his  fancies,  for  demonstrating,  proselyting,  disputing, 
illustrating  his  general  principles  by  specific  examples, 
fortifying  his  positions  by  proofs,  and  so  on — in  short, 
the  predominance  of  the  polemic  element  in  his  works 
— indicates  how  superficial  is  his  medisevalism  itself  in 
everything  but  intensity  of  unmixed  emotion.  The 
one  essential  resemblance  between  him  and  St.  Francis 
is  his  exaltation.  Fancy  St.  Francis  as  the  founder  of 
the  St.  George  Society  !  He  undoubtedly  made  many 
people  see  the  side  by  which  St.  Francis  is  superior  to 
Theocritus,  but  it  may  be  said  that  any  one  nowadays 
.who  is  especially  grateful  for  such  a  service  is  likely 
to  receive  more  harm  than  good  from  it.     St.  Francis 

212 


RUSKIN 

Mmself  has  irrevocably  gone  by.  Rehabilitated  by 
Euskin,  he  becomes  not  only  grotesque  but  injurious, 
because  we  only  get  the  sentimental  side  of  him,  and 
the  future  is  clearly  not  to  sentimentalism. 

Ill 

To  this  predominance  of  the  emotional  sense  over 
the  thinking  power  is  undoubtedly  due  the  didacti- 
cism which  is  the  prominent  strain  in  all  his  writings. 
It  appears  by  no  means  exclusively  in  his  practical 
preachments.  It  pervades  his  writing  on  art  as  well. 
And  it  is  not  necessary  to  subscribe  to  the  doctrine  of 
"  art  for  art's  sake  "  in  order  to  justify  one's  dissatisfac- 
tion with  it.  This  maxim  has  a  temperamental  rather 
than  an  intellectual  appeal  and  can  therefore  be  end- 
lessly and  profitlessly  debated.  On  the  one  hand,  one 
is  tempted  to  adjure  its  opponents  to  consider  art,  if 
not  for  its  own  sake,  then  for  the  sake  of  anything  they 
choose,  but  not  while  ostensibly  occupying  themselves 
with  it  to  be  really  concerned  about  something  else. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  feels  like  asking  its  partisans  to 
consider  the  claims  of  reason  as  well  as  of  beauty,  since 
indeed  beauty  is  but  reason  expressed  in  form,  and  to 
remember  that  the  mind  has  its  aesthetic  needs  as  well 
as  the  senses.  Art  is  not  altogether  an  esoteric  or  arti- 
ficial affair,  cut  off  from  man's  legitimate  and  absorbing 
moral  preoccupation  and  handed  over  to  the  keeping  of 
a  caste  composed  of  votaries  of  the  pleasures  of  the! 

213 


VICTORIAN    PROSE   MASTERS 

senses.  No  one  can  stand  on  the  Athenian  Acropolis 
or  in  the  Medici  Chapel,  or  walk  through  the  Vatican 
Stanze,  without  feeling  himself  in  the  presence  of  an 
epitome  of  a  whole  civilization's  moral  quality.  The 
impression  one  receives  is  ultimately  a  moral  impres- 
sion. The  sentiment  awakened  is  a  moral  sentiment. 
Sentiment,  indeed,  means  moral  sentiment ;  it  is  impos- 
sible to  feel  unmorally.  The  mere  terminology  we 
apply  to  the  aesthetic  elements  of  form  and  color  — 
such  epithets  as  noble,  elevated,  trivial,  serious,  de- 
based —  are  the  counters  of  moral  values.  Considered 
in  the  most  practical  way,  considered  in  its  concrete 
phases  of  plasticity — those  phases  that  preoccupied 
Ruskin  —  art  has  its  universal  relations. 

These  relations,  however,  real  and  important  as  they 
are,  are  dictated  by  its  character.  They  are  quite  dis- 
tinct from  those  of  the  tract  or  the  sermon  or  the 
celebration  of  the  104th  Psalm.  And  to  tliis  vital 
circumstance  Ruskin  never  gave  the  least  heed.  To 
treat  art  as  he  treated  it  is  to  twist  it  out  of  the  direc- 
tion plainly  indicated  by  its  own  inherent  tendency,  to 
divert  it  from  the  true  channel  between  it  and  the  uni- 
versal moral  ideal  of  man's  motive  and  aspiration,  to 
snap  the  native  ties  that  bind  it  to  its  own  supreme 
justification  of  moral  significance  —  to  deny,  in  effect, 
that  it  as  well  as  other  "  modes  of  motion  "  has  its  own 
legitimf.te  and  particular  province  as  an  expression  of 
the  soul.  The  sanctions  of  art  are  undoubtedly  ulti- 
mately moral.     But  so  are  the  sanctions  of  everything 

214 


RUSKIN 

else  —  everything  of  any  real  significance.  And  didac- 
tically to  merge  art  in  ethics,  instead  of  considering  it 
as  an  individual  element  of  man's  general  moral  activity, 
is  as  puerile  as  it  would  be  thus  to  merge  philosophy. 
It  is  notoriously  the  vice  of  the  characteristic  English 
treatment  of  art  that  it  does  this.  His  English  environ- 
ment does  a  great  deal  to  impose  it  on  any  writer. 
But  Ruskin  —  aside  from  the  fact  that  nothing  was 
ever  extraneously  imposed  upon  his  wilfulness  —  met 
the  expectations  of  his  environment,  one  may  say,  very 
much  more  than  half-way.  Indeed,  the  extravagance 
with  which  he  illustrated  this  point  of  view,  reducing  it 
practically  ad  absurdum,  is  probably  accountable  for 
the  almost  complete  decline  in  his  once  prodigious 
influence. 

His  illustration  of  the  specifically  moral  theory  of 
art,  however,  did  not  spring  from  an  inadequate  phi- 
losophy of  the  subject.  The  work  of  no  such  incon- 
testable and  spontaneous  genius  as  his  ever  perhaps 
springs  from  an  inadequate  philosophy.  It  has  a  clear 
temperamental  genesis.  Temperamentally  he  was  all 
of  a  piece — as  his  abundant  self-contradictions  elo- 
quently testify.  No  writer  was  ever  more  so.  And 
his  temperament  was  that  of  unalloyed  didacticism. 
So  that  he  not  only  celebrates  the  didactic  element  in 
art,  the  element  that  can  be  used  didactically,  at  least 
— often  by  twisting  it  out  of  the  intention  of  the  artist 
and  seeing  purpose  in  what  is  mere  presentation ;  he 
takes  it  universally  as  a  text  from  which  to  preach, 

215 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

himself.  He  is  always  preaching.  He  has  the  tone  of 
the  conventicle.  He  is  never  content  with  stating, 
explaining  and  fortifying  his  ideas.  He  is  persistently 
engaged  in  imposing  them.  His  attitude  is  always  the 
attitude  of  superiority,  that  of  the  teacher  to  the  pupiL 
He  instructs  inveterately.  He  can  hardly  say  the  sim- 
plest thing  without  commending  it  to  the  reader  as  a 
rule  of  action  or  avoidance,  something  to  be  especially 
pondered,  to  cherish,  to  shun,  to  doubt,  to  believe,  or 
what  not. 

Wlien  he  abandoned  art  altogether,  as  except  for 
occasional  recurrences  to  it  he  did  with  "  Unto  this 
Last,"  he  was  at  least  more  completely  in  his  native 
element.  The  futility  of  his  social  and  economic  preach- 
ing— which  was  certainly  conspicuous — in  no  wise 
compromises  the  harmoniousness  of  his  consecration 
to  it  with  his  native  tastes  and  capacities.  As  he 
says  himself :  "  These  writings  of  mine,  so  far  as  they 
are  essays  upon  art,  have  been  often  interrupted — 
and  even  warped  and  broken  perhaps — by  digres- 
sions respecting  certain  social  questions  in  which  I 
have  always  had  an  interest  tenfold  greater  than  I 
have  in  the  matters  I  have  been  driven  into  undertak- 
ing." On  these  questions  sciolism  is  perhaps  not  less 
objectionable  than  it  is  in  aesthetic  writing,  but  they 
have  a  legitimate  philanthropic  side  that  better  justifies 
his  didactic  bent.  Here,  at  all  events,  it  comes  out  in 
all  its  energy,  and  some  of  his  admirers  find  here  his 
truer  justification  as  a  "  prophet."    Yet  enjoyment  of  the 

216 


RUSKIN 

prophetic  strain  unsupported  by  sound  substance  must 
always  seem  a  little  singular  to  any  but  a  rococo  or  a 
rude  taste,  one  would  say.  Culture  is  perhaps  a  little 
intolerant  of  didacticism  in  any  case,  but  it  may  ex- 
cusably be  easily  surfeited  by  the  frenzy  of  didacticism 
divorced  from  its  utility.  And  the  prophets  from  whom 
Euskin  got  his  tone  would,  we  may  be  sure,  have 
adopted  a  different  one  with  a  modem  and  occidental 
public,  all  questions  even  of  the  difference  between  his 
and  their  "  messages  "  aside.  One  would  like  to  know 
how  his  employment  in  the  discussion  of  art  and 
economics  of  all  the  rhetorical  apparatus  that  he  bor- 
rowed from  them,  his  abuse  of  "the  words  'Providence' 
and  '  He,' "  as  Thoreau  says,  all  the  "  Biblism,"  in  short, 
which  forms  so  large  a  part  of  his  rhetorical  stock  in 
trade  and  gives  a  subtly  factitious  cogency  to  his  ex- 
travagances, would  strike  such  a  pious  sense  as  that  of 
the  judicious  Hooker,  for  example.  In  much  the  same 
way,  probably,  that  it  does  the  sestheticians  and  econo- 
mists themselves — namely,  as  an  arrogant  and  irre- 
sponsible mixing  of  genres  in  defiance  of  innate  de- 
corum. 

IV 

His  writing  on  art,  at  aU  events,  his  didacticism 
distorts  in  the  first  place,  and  vitiates  in  the  second. 
It  distorts  it  by  giving  it  the  false  sanction  of  moral 
purpose,  of  utility.  In  a  large  sense,  as  I  have  said, 
art  certainly  has  this  sanction,  and  no  other,  like  every 

217 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

department  of  Imman  effort.  In  the  only  sense,  how- 
ever, in  which  this  is  not  a  truism,  it  is  false ;  and 
a  detailed  consideration  of  art  in  this  view  results  in 
distortion.  It  is  nothing  against  the  "Perseus"  of 
Florence  that  Benvenuto  was  a  rascal ;  it  is  nothing 
in  favor  of  the  absurd  embryonic  sculpture  on  St. 
Mark's  that  the  artisan  was  a  reverent  and  pious 
worker  belonging  to  the  "  ages  of  faith."  Purely  emo- 
tional treatment  of  fine  art  is  vitiated  treatment,  be- 
cause it  upsets  all  real  distinctions  and  all  relative 
values.  Frequent  examples  of  this  in  Ruskin  recur  to 
one's  memory.  In  fact,  it  is  to  be  said  in  all  soberness 
that  they  make  up  the  body  of  his  art  writing  outside 
of  its  rhapsody.  Complete  surrender  to  emotion, 
which  is,  of  course,  the  source  of  whim  and  fanaticism, 
has  resulted,  in  Mr.  Euskin's  case,  in  a  body  of  criti- 
cism most  of  which  is  never  seen  by  competent  critics 
without  either  exasperation  or  disdain.  It  never  sings 
the  praises  of  restraint,  of  severity,  of  the  Greek  ele- 
ment in  art.  It  loses  the  form  in  the  significance,  and 
the  significance  it  as  often  as  not  supplies  itself.  It 
not  only  exalts  sentiment  in  altogether  undue  degree, 
and  depreciates  pure  expression,  but  the  sentiment 
which  unfailingly  it  admires  is  sentiment  of  a  particu- 
larly primitive  nature.  It  becomes  ecstatic  to  puerility 
over  a  crude  Giotto  forgery  in  Santa  Maria  Novella, 
for  example  (vide  "  Mornings  in  Florence  "),  and  is  un- 
moved by  the  ineffable  spirituality  of  Raphael's  inex- 
haustible expression.      It  shows  the  delight  of  a  savage 

218 


RUSKIN 

in  the  presence  of  the  positive  colors  simply  combined, 
and  remains  cold  before  subtle  harmonies  of  value. 
It  extols  "  the  precision  and  perfection  of  the  instanta- 
neous line  "  as  the  acme  of  painting,  and  finds  Titian's 
*'  Presentation  "  a  cheap  composition. 

The  truth  is,  he  was  quite  disoriented  in  writing 
about  art  at  all.  He  neither  recognized  its  limitations, 
nor  acquiesced  in  its  office,  nor  apprehended  its  distinc- 
tion. He  did  not  like  it.  He  was,  which  is  quite 
another  thing,  in  love  with  nature.  All  the  art  he 
cared  for  was  what  is  sometimes  called  imitative  art, 
and  his  measure  of  this  was  the  amount  of  unadulterated 
nature  it  contained.  For  constructive  and  composed 
beauty  he  had  no  feeling.  He  thought  it  blasphemous. 
He  shrank  instinctively  from  everything  architectonic. 
Art,  in  the  sense  of  nature  plus  the  artist's  alembic, 
absolutely  disquieted  and  perturbed  him.  He  had  his 
own  alembic  —  and  certainly  one  whose  magic  is  its 
own  justification  often.  But  what  an  equipment  for  a 
writer  —  either  philosophic  or  even  poetic  —  on  art! 
Art  has  its  own  sanctions,  its  own  gospel,  its  own  devo- 
tees. Mr.  Ruskin  was  of  the  opposite  creed  —  one 
may  say,  in  the  opposite  camp.  A  bit  of  botany  in  a 
painter's  work  was  more  to  him  than  the  loveliest  gen- 
eralization. Partly  his  contention  was  the  moral  one 
that  it  showed  more  reverence,  more  fidelity,  more 
humility.  Let  whoever  will  define  these  terms,  which 
in  this  sense,  at  all  events,  are  already  obsolescent,  even 
in    English   writing    upon    art.     Their    illogicality  is 

219 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

apparent.  The  cathedral  is  as  apt  a  place  as  a  cave  to 
worship  in,  and  God  is  doubtless  as  immanent  in  the 
work  of  man  as  in  inanimate  nature.  Eeduced  to  its 
lowest  terras  —  and  to  absurdity —  Ruskin's  contention 
would  be  that  the  soul  is  not  His  habitation.  But  the 
only  way  to  absolve  him  from  the  charge  of  the  loosest 
kind  of  thinking  in  his  lucubrations  on  art  is,  avoiding 
confutation  of  his  logic,  to  concentrate  onfe's  attention 
on  his  adoration  of  nature. 

Here,  however,  he  was  beyond  all  cavil  superb. 
Has  ever  any  one  else  done  what  he  has  here  ?  One  is 
almost  tempted  into  dithyramb  in  speaking  of  the  way 
in  which  he  has  verbally  crystallized  his  appreciations 
of  the  myriad  aspects  of  that  immense  and  immensely 
attractive  energy  of  which,  if  Wordsworth  is  to  be 
called  the  poet,  Ruskin  himself  is  surely  the  oracle. 
He  characterizes  Wordsworth,  somewhere,  in  his  ludi- 
crously patronizing  way,  as  in  his  best  period  "  simply  a 
Westmoreland  peasant  with  the  gift  of  melody."  It  is 
an  absurd  description  of  Wordsworth,  but,  mutatis 
mutandis,  it  might  do  for  Ruskin  —  one  might  say,  if 
inspired  by  an  analogous  whimsicality.  He  lacked  con- 
stitutionally, it  is  true,  the  simplicity  of  the  peasant. 
He  had  not  even  the  Tennysonian  substitute  of  simplesse 
—  to  recall  Arnold's  happy  distinction.  No  great 
writer  was  ever  so  perversely  complicated.  But  in  his 
view  of  nature,  his  absolute  worship  of  her,  he  was 
more  than  simple,  he  was  naive.  And  his  readers  reap 
the  benefit  of  this  attitude  in  a  long  succession  of  lofty 

220 


RUSKIN 

and  noble  and  moving  and  intimate  disquisitions  which 
not  only  elevate  and  charm  but  inform  and  instruct. 
He  declares  her  mysteries  with  prophet-like  authority, 
and  seduces  us  into  her  arcanum  with  the  most  winning 
persuasions.  None  of  her  aspects  escapes  his  affection- 
ately prolonged  penetrative  gaze,  and  he  synthetizes 
them  with  an  art  that  seems  even  to  transcend  the  ob- 
servation on  which  it  is  based.  His  one  distinction  is 
to  have  been  the  most  attentive,  the  most  affectionate, 
the  most  eloquent,  the  most  persuasive  apostle  of  na- 
ture. But  surely  his  preoccupation  with  art  must  be 
admitted  to  be  perversity,  and  in  his  treatment  of  it 
any  one  who  has  as  much  delight  in  beauty  as  Ruskin 
had,  and  who  therefore  needs  no  emotional  stimulus, 
will  find  the  same  lack  of  substance  as  he  who  already 
believes  in  mediaeval  virtues  will  in  his  more  specific 
"  criticism  of  Hfe." 


Aenold  somewhere  relates  that  he  once  remarked 
to  Sainte-Beuve  that  he  could  not  consider  Lamartine  a 
poet  of  much  importance,  and  that  Sainte-Beuve  replied : 
"  He  was  important  to  us."  Euskin's  real  importance 
is  of  a  similarly  relative  kind.  He  undoubtedly  earned 
the  reward  of  the  evangehst,  however  little  to  do  with 
any  estimate  of  his  work  as  literature  such  a  distinction 
may  have.  He  gave  an  immense  impetus  in  his  own  coun- 
try and  among  ourselves  to  the  popular  interest  in  the 
whole  subject  of  fine  art.     He  raised  its  standard  and 

221 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

beat  the  drum  and  clashed  the  cymbals  about  it  with  a 
vigor,  a  vehemence  and  a  persistency  that  v^^on  thou- 
sands of  recruits  from  the  ranks  of  the  philistines. 

In  the  first  place,  he  discovered  in  it  a  great  deal  of 
neglected  beauty.  His  study  of  its  "  original  docu- 
ments "  was,  if  not  always  profound,  prodigiously  pro- 
longed in  many  cases,  as  an  ample  fortune  and  complete 
leisure  permitted.  He  was  quite  unhampered,  often  to 
the  point  of  being  uninstructed,  by  the  consensus  of 
other  writing  on  the  subject.  To  archaeologists  he  is 
occasionally  as  much  of  a  sciolist  as  he  is  to  political 
economists,  though  to  the  general  laic  appreciation  his 
erudition  seems  a  main  element  of  his  equipment. 
"  Every  one  is  not  bound  to  know  in  what  Gothic  con- 
struction consists,"  said  a  pupil  of  Courajod  to  me  once, 
speaking  of  Euskin,  "  but  I  think  a  professor  should." 
But  he  brought  to  the  monuments  and  pictures  that 
inspired  him  a  fresh  eye  and  a  strenuous  and  individual 
temperament.  For  many  people  he  practically  discov- 
ered the  primitifs,  and  by  merely  imagining  himself 
—  often  no  doubt  quite  erroneously  —  at  their  point  of 
view,  said  many  truly  and  searchingly  interpretative 
things  about  them  out  of  sheer  force  of  sympathy. 
About  Giotto,  for  a  conspicuous  example.  The  very 
predominance  of  the  emotional  over  the  intellectual  side 
in  him  led  him  to  feel  the  sentiment  so  inadequately 
expressed  in  technical  respects.  His  temperamental 
depreciation  of  Ghirlandajo's  manifest  merit,  for  ex- 
ample, exactly  prepares  him  for  perceiving  the  feeling 

222 


RUSKIN 

inherent  in  many  an  awkward,  incompetent  and  un- 
beautiful  piece  of  workmanship.  Of  course  in  many 
cases  he  had  to  praise  the  workmanship,  too.  But 
meantime  he  had  drawn  attention  to  his  favorites  and 
got  them  at  least  considered.  By  dint  merely  of  dis- 
covering "  the  most  beautiful  picture  in  the  world " 
here  and  there,  now  the  Bellini  of  the  Frari,  now  the 
Carpaccio  in  the  Museo  Correr,  as  his  preference 
changed,  he  stimulated  popular  interest  in  the  less 
notable,  but  in  a  sense  hardly  more  negligible,  of  the 
masters  of  painting.  And  similarly  with  a  bit  of  mosaic 
in  a  certain  church  pavement,  or  a  certain  capital  of  a 
well-known  palace,  or  a  certain  little  figure  of  a  cathe- 
dral faQade,  and  so  on.  In  tliis  way  he  led  his  readers 
to  appreciate  the  wealth  of  historic  art  production  as 
under  more  conventional,  less  fanciful,  guidance  they 
would  have  —  indeed,  had  theretofore  under  such  guid- 
ance —  failed  to  do. 

In  the  second  place,  the  generalizing  character  of 
his  writing  on  art  popularized  the  subject.  He  had  a 
philosophy  of  it,  bizarre  as  this  might  be.  He  talked 
infinitely  about  its  principles,  such  as  he  curiously  con- 
ceived them.  There  is  an  idea  —  or  at  least  a  notion,  a 
crotchet  —  in  all  his  utterances.  His  descriptions  even 
are  largely  illustrative.  Whatever  he  says  has  signifi- 
cance in  the  sense  of  dealing  with  meaning  rather  than 
exclusively  with  aspect.  It  is  at  least  a  text  from 
which  to  preach  and  not  left  merely  to  itself.  From 
the  outset  all  his  writing  on  art  is  full  of  "  views,"  and 

223 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

to  a  large  number  of  readers  "  views  "  are  particularly 
interesting.  Those  of  which  he  was  so  prodigal  were, 
moreover,  by  no  means  exclusively  on  art,  but  on  all 
sorts  of  more  or  less  allied  topics  also.  All  of  them 
had  a  strong  ethical  tinge,  which  was  in  itself  a  popular 
recommendation  of  the  strongest  kind.  If  this  is  what 
art  is,  many  must  have  reflected,  it  is  sometliing  serious 
after  all,  something  really  worth  while.  And  very  often 
they  had  the  additional  attractiveness  of  more  or  less 
novelty  either  in  themselves  or  in  their  presentation. 
The  chapter-titles  alone  of  "  Modern  Painters "  are 
eloquent  witness  of  his  disposition  to  take  his  sub- 
ject on  large  general  lines,  just  as  the  mere  nomencla- 
ture of  his  "  seven  lamps  "  announced  a  novel  kind  of 
ideal  synthesis  of  architecture,  however  fanciful  it 
might  be.  He  was,  in  fact,  captivatingly  synthetic.  All 
aesthetic  phenomena  of  which  he  treated  —  and  the  de- 
tail of  them  is  prodigious  in  number  and  multifarious- 
ness —  grouped  themselves  readily  in  serried  support  of 
some  central  and  unifying  idea,  some  co-ordinating 
thesis,  and  took  on  the  orderly  aspect  of  an  organism. 
There  is  an  air  of  great  system  and  explicit  correlation 
in  everything  he  wrote  on  art,  and  nothing  better  pre- 
pares the  way  for  the  reception  of  anything  like  a  body 
of  doctrine. 

VI 

Matching  and  supplementing  the  service  rendered 
by  Ruskin's  writing  on  art  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  public 

224 


RUSKIN 

in  general  is  that  rendered  by  it  to  art  itself  —  meaning 
mainly  English  painting.  It  certainly  cannot  be  said 
that  his  writing  on  art  drew  the  attention  of  English 
painters  to  nature.  The  sub-title  of  "  Modern  Painters  " 
itself  was,  in  the  first  edition,  "  Their  Superiority  in  the 
Art  of  Landscape-painting  to  the  Ancient  Masters  "  — 
not  only  the  superiority  of  Turner  imprimis,  but  of 
many  other  EngUsh  painters.  But  he  did  more  than 
attract  general  attention  to  this  contention.  In  doing 
this  he  also  appreciably  determined  the  course  of 
English  painting.  Under  his  influence  landscape-paint- 
ing greatly  increased,  and  for  a  time,  at  least,  it  largely 
followed  the  lines  he  laid  down  for  it.  Captivated  by 
his  apotheosis  of  nature,  English  painting  to  a  consider- 
able extent  forswore  its  particular  conventionalities  and 
practised  the  precepts  he  preached.  How  much  or  how 
little  he  is  to  be  credited — or  charged — with  the  origi- 
nation of  pre-Eaphaelitism  as  practised  by  the  prominent 
elders  of  the  sect  has  been  much  discussed,  but  it  is 
unimportant  beside  the  fact  that  he  preached  their 
gospel  from  the  first,  won  them  professional  adherents, 
and  greatly  extended  their  influence  and  vogue.  He 
furnished  them  with  a  philosophy,  with  followers  and 
with  a  public.  And  the  decline  and  disappearance  of 
the  cult  does  not  obscure  the  fact  that  the  predominance 
of  the  "  note  "  of  nature  in  English  art  ever  since  Eus- 
kin  began  his  ministry  is  largely  due  to  his  eloquent 
insistence  on  it  as  the  one  thing  needful  for  artistic 
salvation.     The  extreme  hteralness,  flatness,  and  pov- 

225 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

erty  as  art  of  much  English  painting  until  long  after 
lluskin  had  turned  his  attention  to  other  things,  shows 
how  influential  was  his  gospel  in  freeing  the  average 
practitioner  from  the  trammels  and  temptations  of 
artistic  conventionality  and  steeping  him  in  a  conven- 
tionality of  its  own  —  the  conventionality  of  naturalis- 
tic imitation.  But  one  may  suspect  that  English  art, 
as  art,  owes  him  more  gratitude  than  resentment  for 
determining  its  course  in  a  direction  which,  however 
Httle  it  shines  in  it,  is  more  consonant  with  its  native 
aptitudes  than  are  the  artificialities  from  which  he  did 
much  to  rescue  it.  If  its  nature-worship  under  his 
tuition  shows  more  in  the  transliteration,  as  one  may 
say,  than  the  translation  of  nature,  it  is  at  least  an 
expression  of  a  genuine  and  not  an  acquired  bent. 

VII 

As  to  the  lack  of  form  in  Euskin's  style,  there  is 
likely  to  be  far  more  dispute.  Let  it  be  said  at  once 
that  his  style  is  wonderfully  eloquent.  It  has,  more- 
over, one  specific  quality  that  mainly  distinguishes  it 
from  the  prose  of  any  other  writer :  it  has  a  peculiar 
beauty  of  cadence.  It  is  true  that  its  cadence  is  the 
element  in  it  that  most  strongly  suggests  to  a  nice 
sense  its  falling  short  of  the  music  of  metre.  And  of 
course  he  abused  it.  Like  his  other  quahties,  it  led 
directly  and  irresistibly  to  its  corresponding  defect. 
He  took  no  artistic  pleasure  in  its  guidance  and  con- 

226 


RUSKIN 

trol,  but  delivered  himself  up  to  it  with  his  usual  lux- 
urious self-surrender.  Yet  it  is  the  element  of  his 
prose  which  is  not  only  most  nearly  unique,  but  also 
most  serviceable  to  him.  It  sustains  and  gives  char- 
acter to  his  periods,  many  of  which  run  into  passages 
too  prolonged  for  the  breath  of  even  his  most  devoted 
admirers.  In  his  hands  it  is  beautifully  differen- 
tiated. The  cadence  of  Gibbon,  of  De  Quincey,  even  of 
Jeremy  Taylor,  is  a  simple  affair  beside  Euskin's,  which 
in  comparison  possesses  an  infinite  variety  of  notes  and 
chords.  It  gives  him  a  title  to  real  greatness  as  a 
technician.  It  carries  his  excesses  of  assonance  and 
alliteration — excesses  which  in  his  earHer  writings  he 
contemptuously  stigmatizes,  in  his  later,  however,  natu- 
rally recurring  to  them  again.  It  is  the  native  and 
spontaneous  factor  that  purifies  his  "  fine  writing  "  and 
qualifies  its  artificiahty.  Through  his  cadence  you  feel 
that  his  meretriciousness  has  a  kind  of  nodal  substruc- 
ture of  natural  and  genuine  felicity.  Take,  for  exam- 
ple, the  following  "  purple  patch  "  from  one  of  his  later 
deliverances.  He  is  speaking  of  the  dove,  apropos  of 
vivisection : 

And  of  these  wings  and  this  mind  of  hers  this  is  what 
reverent  science  [one  feels  like  interpolating  "  sic "]  should 
teach  you.  First,  with  what  parting  of  plume  and  what 
soft  pressure  and  rhythmic  beating  of  divided  air  she 
reaches  that  miraculous  swiftness  of  undubious  motion,  com- 
pared with  which  the  tempest  is  slow  and  the  arrow  uncer- 

227 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

tain ;  and,  secondly,  what  clew  there  is,  visible  or  conceiv- 
able to  thought  of  man,  by  which  to  her  living  conscience 
and  errorless  pointing  of  magnetic  soul  her  distant  home  is 
felt  far  beyond  the  horizon,  and  the  straight  path,  through 
concealing  clouds  and  over  trackless  lands,  made  plain  to 
her  desire  and  her  duty  by  the  finger  of  God. 

This,  I  think,  is  Euskin's  prose  at  its  best,  and 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  substantially  its  quality  in  his 
writings.  Its  liquid  recurrent  cadences  are  varied  and 
accumulated  with  the  nicest  instinctive  art.  It  is  not, 
to  be  sure,  quite  in  the  classic  key.  Horace,  who  ob- 
jected to  the  purpureiis  pannus  even  in  poetry,  we  may 
be  certain  would  not  have  greatly  cared  for  it.  If  read 
aloud  it  beguiles  the  voice  into  a  kind  of  chant  and  so 
is  likely  to  please  most  the  ear  most  easily  satisfied 
with  a  substitute  when  song  is  suggested.  And  there- 
fore, since  it  is  not  quite  "  the  real  thing,"  the  effect  of 
it  in  the  profusion  in  which  we  encounter  it  in  Eus- 
kin's writings  is  the  efifect  of  surfeit.  It  makes  excel- 
lent selections  for  the  declamation  of  youtli,  and  it  has 
given  many,  many  mature  readers  the  greatest  pleas- 
ure, and,  since  enjoying  it  evokes  no  energy,  pleas- 
ure of  a  slightly  oriental  order.  In  a  sense,  indeed, 
it  might  be  called  voluptuous  prose,  were  it  not  so 
often  the  garb  of  sentiments  whose  moral  nature  ren- 
ders it  elevated  as  well  as  eloquent.  And  mainly  its 
intoxicating  quality  lies  in  its  characteristic  cadences, 
which,  as  I  say,  no  other  writer  has  ever  equalled. 

228 


RUSKIN 

And  at  times  it  carries  one  away  with  it ;  you  for- 
get any  notions  you  may  have  about  the  essential 
characteristics  of  prose,  or  recall  them  only  to  feel 
yourself  a  pedant.  It  is  when  he  is  speaking  of  nature 
especially  that  this  is  true,  as  I  have  already  imphed  — 
when  "  the  waves  of  everlasting  green  roll  silently  into 
their  long  inlets  under  the  shadows  of  the  pines."  You 
doubt  if  Wordsworth's  poetry  has  surpassed  such  expres- 
sion of  the  power  of  nature  over  the  emotions.  But  its 
first  effect  past,  the  old  notions  about  prose  recur,  as 
they  do  after  reading  Jeremy  Taylor  or  Elizabethan 
prose.  You  feel  that  there  is  something  lacking,  some 
element  tending  to  repose,  to  sanity.  Such  a  force  as  is 
applied  by  the  reserve  of  poetic  form,  reducing  to 
calmer  movement  and  severer  outline  the  tumultuous 
cadences  in  which  Mr.  Euskin's  emotional  genius  riots, 
would  be  of  advantage,  perhaps,  even  in  such  a  splen- 
did passage  as  that  whose  closing  lines  I  last  quoted. 
Even  outbursts  of  impassioned  eloquence,  when  they 
merely  or  mainly  express  emotion,  gain  in  elevation 
and  permanent  charm  through  the  element  of  artistic 
restraint.  But  there  is  no  room  for  doubt  that  the 
positive  need  of  this  is  illustrated  by  the  mass  of  Eus- 
kin's rhapsodical  writing.  His  exuberance  is  very 
often  absolutely  savage  and  meaningless.  It  is  pure 
feeling  exhaled  in  the  worst  possible  taste.  Take, 
among  a  multitude  of  examples,  the  once  admired  pas- 
sage describing  the  piazza  and  church  of  St.  Mark.  It 
is  perfectly  unscrupulous  in  its  rhetorical  devices,  and 

229 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

thoroughly  puerile  in  its  cheap  tropicality.  Euskin 
would  infallibly  and  correctly  describe  such  a  passage 
in  another  writer  as  "cockney."  It  is  because  his 
great  defect  is  excess  of  emotion,  and  because  emotion 
in  one  way  or  another  is  nearly  his  only  source  of 
strength,  and  because  poetical  form  is  almost  sure  to 
counteract  excess,  that  English  literature  has  perhaps 
lost  from  Euskin's  exclusive  devotion  to  prose.  To  the 
preponderance  of  his  emotional  over  his  intellectual 
side,  at  all  events,  are  justly  attributable  the  two  great 
defects  which  imperil  his  position  as  an  English  classic, 
namely,  the  lack  of  substance  in  his  matter  and  the 
lack  of  form  in  his  style. 


230 


GEOEGE   MEEEDITH 


GEOEGE  MEEEDITH  .        J^ 


I 


Theee  are  many  traces  in  Mr.  Meredith's  novels  of  his 
sensitiveness  to  the  popular  neglect  of  them.  There  is 
no  doubt  of  the  neglect  hitherto,  though  there  are  signs 
just  at  present  of  his  increasing  vogue.  And  he,  at 
least,  is  too  large-minded  a  writer  to  be  consoled  for 
the  indifference  of  the  many  by  the  devotion  of  a  few. 
When  one  considers  not  merely  the  very  considerable 
bulk  of  his  contribution  to  fiction,  but  its  extraordi- 
nary range  and  variety,  and  the  absence  in  it  anywhere 
of  the  element  of  preciosity  or  other  littleness  of  the 
kind,  the  adhesion  of  "  the  elect "  must  seem  a  derisory 
mitigation  of  the  sense  of  having  missed  the  interest  of 
the  general. 

But  such  originality  as  his  —  originality  at  any 
price  —  is  to  be  achieved  only  at  the  cost  of  isolation.] 
Note  also  that  one  instinctively  speaks  of  it  as  an 
achievement  rather  than  a  native  endowment.  Were 
it  altogether  the  gift  of  mother  nature,  its  evolution 
could  be  traced  and  its  relationships  established.  ^As 
it  is,  it  has  no  genealogy.  No  writer  ever  pursued 
particularity  so  far;  with   the   result  that  he  stands 

233 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

quite  apart  from  and  unsupported  by  the  literary  fel- 
lowship which  is  a  powerful  agent  in  commending  any 
writer  to  the  attention  of  either  the  studious  or  the 
desultory.  He  cannot  be  placed.  He  has  no  deriva- 
tion and  no  tendency.  His  works  inhere  in  no  larger 
category.  He  gains  nothing  from  ancestry  or  associa- 
tion. He  fills  no  Idcune,  supplements  no  incomplete- 
ness, supplants  no  predecessor.  He  is  so  wholly  sui 
generis  that  neglect  of  him  involves  neglect  of  nothing 
else,  implies  no  deficiency  of  taste,  no  literary  limited- 
ness.  Failure  to  appreciate  him  is  no  impeachment  of 
one's  catholicity.  If  he  has  a  philosophy  he  is  too 
original  to  let  it  be  perceived;  if  he  has  even  a  point 
of  view  he  is  too  original  to  preserve  it  long  enough 
for  the  reader  to  catch.  The  whole  current  of  the 
literature  of  his  day  has  flowed  by  him  without  appar- 
ently awakening  any  impulse  on  his  part  to  stem  or 
accelerate  it,  without  even  attracting  from  him  more 
than  the  interested  glance  of  the  spectator.  His  emi- 
nence is  thus  so  extremely  lonely  as  to  tempt  the  pro- 
fane— whom  he  tempts  a  good  deal  —  to  wonder  if  it 
be  not  his  loneliness  that  constitutes  his  eminence. 
His  complaints  of  his  lack  of  popularity  seem  to  ignore 
this  essential  aloofness,  which  extends  even  to  the  ab- 
sence of  any  media  of  communication.  So  true  is  it 
that  he  makes  no  effort  to  win  readers  by  providing 
even  an  atmosphere  to  be  breathed  in  common  for  the 
time  being,  that  it  is  a  part  of  his  persistent  originality 
expressly  to  avoid  this.     To  the  sincere  dilettante  spirit, 

234 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

to  do  otherwise  would  perhaps  seem  a  concession,  a 
kind  of  solicitation,  open  to  suspicion  of  tincture  with 
vulgarity.  Eesults  follow  causes,  however,  here  as 
elsewhere,  and  if  Mr.  Meredith  has  been  so  explicitly 
to  take  or  to  leave,  it  is  not  so  very  surprising  that  he 
has  been  so  largely  left. 

^Few  of  those  he  has  won  have  a  very  definite  ac- 
count to  give  of  the  reasons  for  their  adhesion. .  H3,rdly 
any  of  them  have  been  at  the  pains  to  set  these  forth, 
at  all  events.  From  which  one  may  legitimately  infer, 
\l  think,  that  their  enthusiasm  is  largely  constitutional 
rather  than  rational.  They  are,  perhaps,  constitution- 
ally drawn  to  originality  as  such  and  for  its  own  sake. 
They  exhibit  the  interest  of  the  active-minded  in  phe- 
nomena that  appeal  less  acutely  to  the  distinctively 
educated.  To  the  mass  of  representatively  educated 
readers,  Mr.  Meredith's  originality  is  disturbing.  They 
are  already  interested  in  the  things  of  the  mind ;  they 
are  familiar  enough  with  the  riches  of  the  classics  to 
have  in  mind  models  that  admeasure  rather  summarily 
wilful  departure  from  them ;  they  are  distrustful  of  the 
eccentric  and  inhospitable  to  novelty  that  controverts 
estabhshed  canons.  They  care  so  much  for  literature 
as  to  care  much  less  for  anything  so  little  like  it. 
There  is  no  conservatism  more  inveterate  than  the  con- 
servatism of  education ;  none  has  more  excuse  for  con- 
firmation in  the  emptiness  of  the  radicalism  which 
continually  confronts  and  opposes  it ;  and  none  has  so 
clear  and  so  confident  a  repose  in  its  own  standards. 

235 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

Since  the  works  of  Mr.  Meredith  are  so  entirely  sui 
generis  as  to  constitute  a  class  by  themselves  in  contra- 
distinction and  even  antagonism  to  not  some  but  all  of 
the  masterpieces  they  admire,  and  since  moreover  these 
works  are  difficult  to  read,  educated  conservatism  is  often 
disposed  to  trust  to  the  pari  de  Pascal  and  take  its 
chances.  A  good  deal  remains,  after  all,  even  if  one 
loses  something,  is  no  doubt  its  reflection. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  active-minded,  who  are 
traditionally  unfettered,  and  in  no  wise  disconcerted 
by  contravention  of  the  classic,  instinctively  welcome 
what  no  tjTannical  standard  bids  them  exclude.  Not 
that  they  and  the  object  of  their  worship  in  this  case 
are  sympathetically  or  even  similarly  constituted.  Mr. 
Meredith  is  the  incarnation  of  culture.  He  is  educated 
to  the  point  of  extreme  refinement.  As  Thackeray 
said  of  Macaulay,  "  he  reads  twenty  books  to  write  a 
sentence ;  he  travels  a  hundred  miles  to  make  one  line 
of  description."  But  the  attraction  of  the  candle  of 
culture  for  the  moth  of  irresponsible  mental  activity 
is  a  familiar  phenomenon.  And  in  Mr.  Meredith's 
works,  whatever  the  business  in  hand  or  however 
wretchedly  it  is  proceeding,  this  luminary  is  always 
alight.  Penetrating  remarks  about  life,  searching  ob- 
servations on  human  character,  proverbs,  epigrams, 
aphorisms,  saws,  shine  brilliantly  or  sputter,  as  the 
case  may  be,  continually  in  its  beams.  The  evidence 
that  he  knows  what  he  is  talking  about  is  prodigiously 
voluminous.     The  circumstance  that  what  he  is  talking 

236 


GEOKGE  MEREDITH 

about  if  large  lacks  concreteness  and  if  small  lacks 
relations,  that  in  saying  a  number  of  specific  things 
about  things  in  general  he  is  stimulating  the  apprecia- 
tive faculties  rather  than  providing  an  object  for  their 
satisfaction,  is  less  material?  The  less  coherent  and 
constructive  culture  is,  the  more  clearly  it  appears  as 
culture,  as  an  end  in  itself  rather  than  as  a  means  to 
any  end  —  such  as  the  manufacture  of  masterpieces,  for 
example.  For  a  similar  reason  there  is  also  to  be  found 
among  Mr.  Meredith's  admirers  that  element  of  the  lit- 
erary class  which  particularly  savors  technic  as  technic ; 
and  his  extreme  cleverness,  his  variety  and  deftness  of 
manipulation,  so  to  speak,  must  be  what  wins  for  him 
the  applause  of  such  technicians  as  Mr.  Henry  James 
and  Mr.  Stevenson,  though  when  Mr.  Stevenson  called 
him  Shakespearian,  he  must  have  had  his  active  imagi- 
nation also  in  mind.  And  there  are  doubtless  many 
readers  who  "  care  more  for  thought  than  for  art,"  as 
the  preference  has  been  expressed,  and  who  share  with 
such  literary  artificers  as  Mr.  James  and  Mr.  Stevenson 
a  fondness  for  the  raw  i^aterial  of  art,  provided  it  be  of 
high  quality,  without  pedantically  demanding  that  too 
much  be  done  with  it._ 

Neither  the  neglect  nor  the  enthusiasm  of  which  he 
is  the  object,  however,  helps  to  characterize  Mr.  Mere- 
dith's genius,  save  indirectly,  and  I  have  only  referred 
to  them  in  the  endeavor  to  explain  that  they  are  natural 
and  should  not  be  suffered  to  prejudge  his  case.  He  is 
too  large  a  figure  to  be  obscured  even  by  his  own 

237 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

"  originality,"  on  the  one  liand,  or,  on  the  other,  to  be 
belittled  by  the  extravagant  admiration  of  "  the  elect." 
He  has  written  many  novels  and  not  one  that  does  not 
furnish  brilliant  evidence  of  remarkable  powers.  His 
poetry  is  a  secondary  affair  altogether,  whatever  its 
value,  and  it  is  as  a  novelist  that  he  ranks  in  the  litera- 
ture of  his  time.  And  as  a  novelist  it  may  be  claimed 
and  must  be  conceded  that  his  position  is  not  only 
unique,  as  I  have  said,  but  of  very  notable  eminence. 
What  other  writer  deserves  to  rank  with  Thackeray 
and  George  Eliot  in  the  foremost  files  of  Victorian  fic- 
tion? —  I  do  not  mean  for  extraordinary  genius,  like 
Dickens's,  or  for  dramatic  psychology,  such  as  Mr. 
Hardy's,  but  for  his  "  criticism  of  life." 

II 

The  defect  one  feels  most  sensibly  in  Mr.  Meredith's 
organization  is  his  lack  of  temperament.  It  is  this  that 
extracts  the  savor  from  his  originalily.  He  has,  if  one 
chooses,  the  temperament  of  the  dilettante.  But  the 
characteristic  of  the  dilettante  really  is  absence  of  tem- 
perament. Like  its  far  less  frequent  but  also  far  less 
indispensable  analogue,  genius,  temperament  is  much 
more  easily  felt  than  defined.  It  is  approximately  to  be 
described,  however,  as  individuality  of  disposition  quite 
apart  from  intellectual  constitution,  which  nevertheless 
it  influences,  directs  and  at  times  even  coerces.  It  is  of 
the  essence  of  the  personal  nature,  of  which  the  merely 

238 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

intellectual  expression  is,  in  comparison,  an  attribute. 
It  supplies  not  only  the  color  but  the  energy  of  any 
personal  point  of  view  or  way  of  looking  at  things.  It 
is  the  incalculable  element  in  the  human  composition, 
the  force  through  which  the  others  fuse.  It  is  through 
temperament  that  character  organizes  its  traits  into  a 
central  and  coherent  efficiency.  Temperament,  in  a 
word,  is  energy  accentuating  personality.  Original  — 
and  indubitable  —  as  Mr.  Meredith's  genius  is,  his  per- 
sonality is  precisely  what  we  never  feel  in  it.  It  is  not 
at  all  that  he  is  what  used  to  be  called  "  objective  "  — 
that,  like  Shakespeare,  he  does  not "  abide  our  question." 
It  is  that  he  fails  to  excite  it.  He  is  detached,  evasive, 
elusive,  but  he  stimulates  no  curiosity._  One  may  specu- 
late, it  is  true,  though  without  zeal,  as  to  the  reason 
of  his  own  interest  in  many  of  the  phenomena  that  his 
books  present.  This  interest  is  not  only  inferably  but 
obviously  very  great,  and  it  strikes  one  as  singular  con- 
sidering his  monopoly  of  it  on  many  occasions  —  for  I 
suppose  even  the  so-called  Meredithian  must  fail  to 
share  it  much  of  the  time,  however  he  may  overdo  the 
business  as  a  rule.  The  answer  is  that  it  is  the  interest 
of  the  dilettante,  too  much  absorbed  in  phenomena  to 
think  of  himself  contributing  anything  to  their  recom- 
bination in  accordance  with  his  own  vision  or  volition 
—  at  most  occupied  with  attributions  and  exposition. 

The  dilettante  is,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  an  inde- 
pendent rather  than  an  inferior  type.  Distinction  is 
so  marked  and  constant  a  quality  of  Mr.  Meredith  that 

239 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

to  ascribe  inferiority  of  any  kind  to  him  would  be  ludi- 
crous —  except  in  so  far  as,  for  example,  his  particular 
order  of  cjitical  implies  an  inferiority  of  constructive 
talent.  He  is  the  ideal  dilettante  in  virtue  of  the  com- 
pleteness and  the  catholicity  of  his  devotion  to  the 
delectable.. .  He  finds  it  everywhere  —  everywhere,  that 
is  to  say,  where  it  exists  in  intellectual  combination. 
And  this,  I  think,  gives  him  his  extraordinary  relief 
against  his  English  environment,  in  which  his  temper 
and  interests  are  rarely  to  be  encountered.  He  has 
inexhaustible  curiosity.  What  he  calls  "  the  human 
mechanism"  attracts  him  distinctly  as  a  mechanism. 
Within  certain  limits  he  explores  its  intricacies  with 
wonderful  ardor.  He  treats  an  eccentric  type  a  little 
as  if  it  were  a  new  toy.  The  figure  might  be  pushed 
still  further:  when  he  gets  through  with  investigating 
it,  it  does  not  go  quite  as  well  as  before  he  took  it  so 
completely  to  pieces.  jSis  analytic  impulse  is  altogether 
out  of  proportion  to  his  architectonic  capacity.  He  is  a 
critic  dealing  with  the  material  of  the  artist. 
,  His  books  are  curiously  alike  in  interest,  worth 
and  meaning.^  And  this  singular  equivalence  testifies 
strongly  to  an  equipoise  undisturbed  by  anything  so 
variable  as  temperament.  Each  has  its  thesis,  and  in  its 
statement  and  demonstration  the  author  evinces  very 
nearly  the  same  zest  inspired  by  its  fellows  —  that  is  to 
say,  an  intellectual  interest  in  the  working  out  of  the 
thesis  qua  thesis.  "  Beauchamp's  Career  "  is  rather  an 
exception.     But  this  is  because  here  his  artistic  thesis 

240 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

happens  to  include  the  setting  forth  of  a  general  social 
and  political  one,  in  which  he  comes  as  near  to  taking 
a  truly  temperamental  interest  —  to  showing,  I  mean  to 
say,  a  real  personal  feeling  —  as  his  systematic  detach- 
ment ever  permits.  In  "  Beauchamp's  Career  "  he  does 
seem  to  betray  a  certain  sympathy  for  man  as  man,  for 
the  democratic  ideal.  It  is  allowed  to  be  divined  and 
is  quite  objectively  expressed  in  the  main,  through 
characters  whose  enthusiasm  is  impartially  exhibited 
as  excessive,  and  whose  periods  are  pruned  by  corre- 
sponding Phocions  of  the  opposite  tendency.  In  ideal 
dilettante  fashion  the  author,  like  victory,  hovers  over 
the  combatants  without  ahghting  in  either  camp.  The 
space  he  gives  to  the  controversy  and  a  shade  of  fervor 
in  the  statement  of  the  "  popular "  side  are  the  main 
evidences  of  his  partiality.  In  "  Evan  Harrington  "  the 
scales  are  held  with  a  blinder  exactness  on  a  truer  level. 
Its  theme  —  "  Can  a  tailor  be  a  gentleman  ? "  —  is  ex- 
quisitely adapted  to  the  dilettante '  genius.  '  It  might 
seem  insipid  but  for  the  fact  that  it  is  English  and  there- 
fore has  tragic  potentialities.  Mr.  Meredith  gets  a  great 
deal  out  of  it.  Doing,  I  think,  full  justice  to  its  grav- 
ity, he  nevertheless  finds  its  development  full  of  zest. 
It  gives  edge  to  his  satire,  in  which  he  is  an  adept, 
never  being  betrayed  into  the  acerbity  foreign  to  the 
true  dilettante.  It  stimulates  his  sportiveness  into  the 
highest  kind  of  high  spirits  a  critic  and  a  philosopher 
may  properly  indulge.  And  at  times  —  as  in  the  ab- 
surd public  house  scene  between  the  absurd  Cogglesby 

241 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

brothers  —  it  declines  into  absurd  farce  without  in  the 
least  losing  its  interest  for  him. 

Note  that  his  detachment  is  not  that  of  the  artist. 
It  is  a  detachment  of  spirit,  not  objectivity  in  treat- 
ment. He  is  often  enough  on  the  stage  himself.  His 
observations  in  propria  persona  are  constant.  He  is 
never  absorbed  either  in  his  subject  or  in  its  delinea- 
tion. On  the  contrary,  he  keeps  it  at  arm's  length 
when  he  is  most  interested  in  it,  and  speculates  copi- 
ously about  it.  He  gives  the  reader  his  impression  of 
it — often  pungent,  generally  prolix.  His  tongue  sub- 
mits to  no  objective  restraint  in  uttering  the  thoughts 
that  arise  in  him  regarding  it.  If  these  thoughts  were 
sufficiently  charged  with  feeling  he  would  appear  as  a 
moralist  or  a  sentimentalist,  but  as  they  have  no  par- 
ticular temperamental  alloy,  no  purpose,  it  is  less 
obvious  that  his  attitude  is  not  artistically,  but  only 
emotionally,  detached.  We  are  accustomed,  in  other 
words,  to  the  artist  whose  presentation  of  his  subject 
is  supplemented  by  his  personal  commentary,  but 
not  to  him  whose  commentary  though  constant  is 
thoroughly  impersonal.  The  latter  is  the  case  with 
Mr.  Meredith ;  and  it  constitutes  no  small  part  of  his 
originality  that  even  his  essential  aloofness  should  be 
no  help  to  him  in  the  artistic  presentation  of  his  sub- 
ject unconfused  with  talk  about  it. 

The  artistic  inappositeness  of  his  commentary,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  not  relieved  by  personal  feeling; 
it  has  no  heart  in  it;  it  wearies  as  prolonged  intel- 

242 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

lectual  activity  unmodified  by  feeling  alone  can  weary. 
He  turns  his  subject  round  and  exhibits  it  as  a 
collector  does  an  interesting  possession  —  a  bit  of 
cloisonne  or  a  figurine.  Except  that  he  does  so  in 
large  fashion,  without  pettiness  or  partisanship  or  other 
limitation,  and  that  his  "  specimens  "  have  indubitable 
significance,  the  parallel  would  be  perfect.  But  in  his 
large  and  penetrating  way  he  lectures  at  great  length 
on  his  finds.  "  The  Egoist,"  for  example,  is  essentially 
a  dissertation  —  full  of  variety,  it  is  true,  and,  truly,  as 
its  subtitle  declares,  "a  comedy  in  narrative"  as  to 
form,  but  substantially  not  inaptly  described  as  a  dis- 
sertation. He  even  digresses  whenever  an  allied  topic 
solicits  him.  Nor  need  the  alliance  be  a  close  one. 
The  chapter  on  wine  in  "  The  Egoist "  and  that  on  ale 
in  "Evan  Harrington"  are  complete  digressions — the 
former,  especially,  a  remarkable  tour  de  force,  but  both 
clearly  the  exuberance  of  the  connoisseur  and  in  no 
wise  details  of  an  artistic  composition.  In  an  artist 
they  would  be  effrontery.  As  it  is  they  are  excellent 
instances  of  the  exercise  of  his  prerogative  by  a  dilet- 
tante in  whose  large  and  catholic  and  rather  Olympian 
attitude  towards  art  one  cannot  help  fancying  a  slight 
tincture  of  disdain. 


^.    .^-  III 


ji  Mr.  Meredith's  world,  however,  is  not  a  real  world. 
It  is  a  fantastic  one  treated  realistically.  It  is  not 
simple  enough  to  be  real ;  he  is  not  simple  enough. ;   It 

243 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

is  so  little  representative  that  it  lacks  illusion.  Any 
one  who  should  base  upon  it  his  notion  of  the  world 
of  English  society — society  in  the  large  sense,  I  mean 
— would  get  not  only  an  incomplete  but  a  distorted- 
idea,  though  Mr.  Meredith's  world  is  as  multifarious  as 
it  is  populous.  It  is,  like  his  genius,  thoroughly  sui 
generis,  and  it  is  peopled  for  the  most  part  with  figures 
of  w^hich  the  large  or  piquant  conception  is  far  more 
definite  than  the  realization.  Dickens's  world,  too,  is 
sui  generis.  But  it  is  everywhere  intensely  real  and 
definite.  You  recall  his  characters  vividly  often_^with- 
out  remembering  in  which  books  they  occur.  In  the 
case  of  Mr.  Meredith,  you  recall  the  books,  not  the 
characters.  You  never  warm  to  his  personages.  You 
are  not  allowed  to.  He  banters  you  out  of  it  gen- 
erally.;" even  when  such  favorites  of  liis  own  as  Nevil 
Beauchamp  are  concerned,  he  is  almost  nervously  tim- 
orous lest  your  tenderness  should  be  unintelligent. 
This  is  carried  so  far  that  one  rarely  cares  much  what 
becomes  of  these  personages.  You  know  in  advance 
that  they  will  never  be  the  sport  of  any  spontaneity. 
Their  fate  is  sealed.  They  are  the  slaves  of  their 
creator's  will,  counters  in  his  game.  And  this  is  why, 
in  playing  it,  though  he  constantly  challenges  our 
admiration,  he  does  not  hold  our  interest.  The  air  of 
free  agency  that  he  throws  around  them  does  not 
deceive  us.  We  don't  at  all  know  what  is  to  befall 
them,  how  they  are  going  to  act,  but  we  have  an  ever- 
present   sense   that    he  does,  and   this   sense  is  only 

244 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

sharpened  by  the  knowledge,  born  of  experience  in 
reading  his  books,  that  he  is  going  to  make  them 
surprise  us.  The  induction  he  would  have  us  make 
is,  no  doubt,  that  they  are  unaccountable,  like  human 
nature  itself ;  but  the  one  we  make  is  that  it  is  he  who 
is  unaccountable. 

There  is  one  characteristic  of  his  people  that  is 
given  great  relief.  They  are  in  general  conceived  and 
presented  from  the  standpoint  of  what  their  creator  is 
fond  of  calling  " brain-stuff.'j  But  "brain-stuff"  is 
easier  to  predicate  than  to  portray.  Every  reader  of 
"Diana  of  the  Crossways"  must  have  remarked  that 
the  heroine  is  declared  to  be  of  an  intellectual  brilliancy 
that  is  inadequately  illustrated  by  her  own  manifesta- 
tions of  the  quality.  Furthermore,  "  brain-stufif "  is 
much  more  useful  to  rank  people  than  to  distinguish 
them.  Brains  as  a  trait  are  rather  an  anomaly.  One 
person  has  more  or  less  than  another,  but  a  markedly 
different  order  of  them  means  eccentricity,  or  is  at  least 
apt  to  seem  so  in  depiction.  As  to  their  natures,  men 
are  what  they  are  through  their  feeling,  not  their  think- 
ing,' except  in  so  far  as  their  thinking  influences  their 
feeling.  And  their  feeling  is  much  more  satisfactorily 
described  directly  than  at  one  remove. 

This  is  one  reason  why  many  of  Mr.  Meredith's 
characters  have  the  prime  defect  of  not  being  always 
in  character.  He  does  not  keep  his  eye  on  them. 
They  do  not  command  his  undivided  attention.  En- 
grossed in  their  "brain-stuff,"  he  has  conceived  them 

245 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

vividly,  but  he  is  not  intimate  enough  with  them,  not 
subconsciously  mindful  enough  of  their  identity.  This 
is  at  least  true  of  the  leading  personages  who  help 
him  to  pose  and  develop  his  theme,  of  which,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  is  unremittingly  mindful.  They  are  the 
theme's  illustrations,  and  vary  with  the  exigencies  of 
its  sinuous  evolution  out  of  the  line  of  personal  consis- 
tency. One  feels  that  they  are  not  the  point.  It  is 
not  merely  that  they  are  not  differentiated  in  diction — 
that  they  all  talk  Meredith — except  here  and  there 
minor  characters  that  sometimes  make  one  wish  they 
did.  This  is  true,  and  it  is  a  great  and  obvious  cause 
of  the  weakening  of  their  individual  definition,  which 
is  always  greater  at  the  outset  than  further  along. 
The  characters  of  many  other  authors,  however,  talk 
alike,  too.  The  circumstance  is  a  convention,  a  con- 
cession to  the  necessity  of  exhibiting  undramatically 
certain  traits  too  delicate,  too  elusive,  for  literally  char- 
acteristic vocabularies  and  habits  of  expression.  Logic 
would  often  require  dialect,  which  is  mainly  intoler- 
able. Compromise  is  imperative  in  any  art,  and  one 
need  not  insist  upon  such  vital  characterizations  in 
mere  diction  as  Browning's,  for  example,  which  tri- 
umph so  splendidly  even  over  the  inevitable  blending 
of  rhythm.  But  take  such  a  notable  instance  as  Mr. 
James,  whose  characters  are  often  reproached  with  talk- 
ing James.  The  reproach,  whether  grave  or  trivial,  is 
often  just,  but  the  main  point  is  that  they  talk  their 
own  sentiments.     Those  of  Mr.  Meredith  often  do  not 

246 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

They  are  his  mouthpieces ;  they  say  what  he  wishes 
said.  The  Princess  Ottilia,  for  instance,  in  "Harry 
Richmond,"  is  a  charming  creature,  originally  con- 
ceived and  for  a  considerable  period  consistently  car- 
ried out.  Yet,  wishing  to  make  a  series  of  observations 
about  "life  and  the  world,"  such  as,  "The  world  has 
accurate  eyes  but  they  are  not  very  penetrating,"  he 
puts  the  shrewd  reflections  of  philosophic  maturity 
into  the  mouth  of  a  young  girl.  Such  instances 
abound  in  his  novels. 

Naturally,  furthermore,  his  psychology  is  a  promi- 
nent constituent  of  his  characterizations,  but  curiously 
enough  it  operates,  at  least  as  often  as  not,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  dissipating  rather  than  defining  their  individ- 
uality. It  is,  in  fact,  nearly  always  a  psychology  of 
types,  not  of  individuals.  The  contrary  is,  of  course, 
usually  the  case  with  the  psychological  novelist,:  whose 
raison  cTStre  may  almost  be  said  to  be  that  for  him 
types  are  conventions  and  therefore  to  be  eschewed 
and  replaced  by  individuals  whose  differentiation  is 
psychologically  achieved.  Particularity  of  mental 
structure  is  his  reliance  for  realistic  illusion  in  his 
characters,  as  individuals  contradistinguished  from 
types.  It  would  be  paradoxical  to  assert  that  Mr. 
Meredith's  characters  are  conventional.  In  the  ordi- 
nary sense  the  epithet  seems  the  one  above  aU  others 
which  least  fits  his  genius  in  any  phase  of  its  expres- 
sion. But  though  to  the  last  degree  unconvention- 
ally handled,  and  exhibited  with  a  freedom  that  is 

247 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

license,  an  originality  that  is  whimsical,  they  are 
nevertheless  treated  as  types.  They  are  simply  un- 
conventional types — types  either  conceived  by  his 
wonderfully  fertile  fancy,  such  as  Harry  Richmond's 
father,  or  generalized  through  his  extraordinary  pene- 
tration, such  as  Sir  Willoughby  Patterne.  Yet,  in 
spite  of  the  wealth  of  psychological  analysis  that  is 
expended  on  them,  they  are  as  representative,  as  illu"s- 
trative,  as  typical,  in  a  word,  as  if  his  aversion  to  the 
traditional  had  not  dictated  their  eccentricity.  They 
acquire  their  high  degree  —  their  high  dilution,  one 
may  almost  say — of  complication  through  being  t}-pes 
of  his  manufacture ;  for  it  is  to  be  noted  that  they  are 
not  typical  in  virtue  of  correspondence  to  any  natural 
analogue.  They  are  in  each  case  a  conceivable  con- 
geries of  characteristics  combined  into  ideal  types  by 
the  genius  of  the  philosophic  critic. 

The  result  is  that  the  illusion  disappears  —  the 
character  does  not  reach  realization.  It  disintegrates 
into  desultoriness.  I  do  not  myself  recall  a  single  char- 
acter in  Mr.  Meredith's  populous  world  that  does  not 
lose  in  definition  in  his  portrayal  of  its  complexity.  It 
is  not  merely  because  he  has  the  idea  instead  of  the 
image  of  it.  That,  to  be  sure,  counts  very  largely.  His 
absurd  Countess  in  "  Evan  Harrington  "  may  stand,  in 
idea,  as  an  analogue  of  Thackeray's  Eebecca,  whose 
memorable  career  was  run  before  "  psychology "  was 
thought  of  as  a  necessary  element  of  fiction.  As  an 
image  the  Countess  is  not  visualized  at  all.     But  her 

248 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

definition  is  not  only  imperfect  to  begin  with.  The 
idea  altogether  eclipses  the  incarnation  of  it  in  the 
treatment  she  receives  as  well  as  in  the  author's  con- 
ception of  her.  She  is  so  much  talked  about  by  her 
creator,  and  her  own  conduct  and  talk  and  letters  are 
so  expressly  calculated  —  so  consecrated,  indeed  —  to 
the  exhibition  of  her  character,  her  character  is  so  ex- 
plicitly and  unremittingly  presented  to  our  contempla- 
tion— we  are  so  constantly  and  often  so  subtly  reminded 
that  she  is  not  all  bad,  for  example — that  instead  of 
seeming  a  real  person  she  seems  an  idea  generalized. 
She  is  a  character  psychologized  into  a  type,  instead  of 
a  type  individualized  by  psychology. 

George  Eliot's  genius  for  generalization  is,  consider- 
ing its  scope  and  its  seriousness,  certainly  not  inferior 
to  Mr.  Meredith's,  but  she  is  mistress  of  it,  and  though 
it  limits  the  elasticity  of  her  characters,  it  is  never 
allowed  to  dilute  their  indi\dduality.  On  the  contrary, 
it  intensifies  it.  Tito  illustrates  an  idea  as  completely, 
as  exclusively,  as  Mr.  Meredith's  Egoist  does,  for  ex- 
ample ;  but  he  incarnates  it  also.  You  get  so  much  of 
the  idea  that  you  would  be  perhaps  glad  of  a  diversion, 
but  it  is  because  Tito  himself  is  so  interpenetrated  with 
it  that  it  is  an  idea  active,  moving  and  alive.  Patterne 
is  in  comparison  a  symbol.  Setting  aside  the  fact  that 
the  whole  question  is  begged  by  describing  him  as  vastly 
more  winning  than  he  is  shown  to  be,  half  his  psychology 
is  commentary,  and  before  long  the  reader  is  admiring  the 
penetration  of  the  author  into  human  character  in  gen- 

249 


VICTORIAN   PROSE   MASTERS 

eral,  his  detection  of  egoism  under  its  multifarious  dis- 
guises, the  justice  he  renders  the  quaUty  even  in  exposing 
it,  and  so  on.  Tito,  on  the  other  hand,  has  the  actual, 
almost  palpable  force  of  the  traditional  "  awful  ex- 
ample." As  for  Maggie  Tulliver  or  any  of  George 
Eliot's  notablest  successes,  none  of  Meredith's  are  at  all 
in  the  same  class  with  them  any  more  than  they  are 
with  Thackeray's.  His  discursiveness  and  his  kind  of 
discursiveness  are  fatal  obstacles.  Whatever  may  be 
said  of  the  art  of  Thackeray's  moralizing  or  of  George 
Eliot's  philosophizing,  neither  is  discursive  in  the  sense 
of  diminishing  the  vitality  of  the  characterizations  it 
accompanies.  Each  serves  the  not  unimportant  pur- 
pose of  enforcing  the  significance  of  the  characters  and 
situations.  But  when  psychology  in  fiction  ceases  to 
particularize  it  becomes  a  pure  excursus.  It  has  its 
interest,  no  doubt,  and  indirectly  may  increase  the 
typical  quality  of  a  character  by  showing  how  much  it 
is  like  other  characters.  But  even  in  this  indirect  way 
it  manifestly  loses  rather  than  gains  definition.  With 
Mr.  Meredith  a  character  is,  in  this  respect,  often  a  mere 
point  of  departure. 

Each  book  is  the  elaboration  of  an  idea,  the  working 
out  of  some  theme  taken  on  its  intellectual  side. 
Sometimes  this  is  very  specific,  as  in  "  Diana "  or 
"Feverel,"  but  it  is  always  perfectly  defined.  The 
book  is  a  series  of  deductions  from  it.  Its  essential 
unity  therefore  —  spite  of  excrescent  detail  —  is  agree- 
ably  unmistakable.      But  it   is    hardly   necessary  to 

250 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

point  out  that  it  is  not  the  unity  of  a  sympathetic 
image  of  Kfe  immediately  beholden  in  its  entirety.  It 
is  a  mathematical,  that  is  to  say  an  artificial,  unity. 
The  plot,  the  personages,  are  not  elements  of  an  ensemble 
but  proofs  of  a  demonstration.  And  human  life  being 
for  artistic  purposes  very  little  a  matter  of  abstractions, 
being,  in  fact,  uncontrollably  concrete,  it  follows  from 
this  that  his  demonstration  is  in  constant  danger  of 
being  a  pure  tour  de  force.  In  effect  Mr.  Meredith's 
novels  are  primarily  toitrs  de  force.  At  least,  if  some  of 
them,  such  as  "  Beauchamp's  Career,"  partially  escape 
this  danger,  the  most  characteristic  ones  do  not.  To 
escape  it  requires  too  much  cleverness,  more  even  than 
Mr.  Meredith  possesses.  Incidentally  it  may  be  cir- 
cumvented, and  incidentally  he  is  successful  —  notably 
in  minor  characters  and  situations.  Some  of  his  minor 
characters  are  not  only  delightful,  but  sound  to  the 
core  —  Sir  Lukin  Dunstane,  Lady  Eglett,  the  pious  sea- 
captain  in  "  Harry  Eichmond,"  a  dozen  others,  of 
which,  however,  candor  compels  the  admission  that  they 
are  the  least  original,  altogether  the  most  nearly  con- 
ventional, of  his  creations.  Some  of  his  situations  are 
extremely  vital  and  truthful  —  the  swimming  scene  in 
"  Lord  Ormont,"  the  statue  impersonation  by  Harry 
Eichmond's  father,  which  is  immensely  comic,  even 
grandiose  —  though  as  a  rule  they  are  either  incidental, 
or  at  most  mechanically  contributory  to  the  plot.  The 
scene  in  "  Harry  Eichmond,"  which  is  the  crux  of  the 
story,  is,  iu  spite  of  the  splendid  philippic  of  the  Squire, 

251 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

a  failure.  The  heroic  mountebank  breaks  down  com- 
pletely, "  goes  to  pieces  "  not  only  in  "  nerve  "  but  as  a 
character  of  fiction.  It  may  be  said  that  thereby  his 
human  quality,  underlying  and  excusing  his  extrava- 
gance, is  shown.  But  a  character  that  has  first  been  in- 
flated into  fantasticality  as  a  tour  de  force  is  not  built  up 
into  convincingness  by  collapse  into  credibility.  It  is 
simply  destroyed.  The  hoUowness  of  the  original  con- 
ception is  lamentably  evident  in  the  retrospect.  The 
circumstance  is  typical  and  illustrates  the  failure  in 
illusion  of  Mr.  Meredith's  art,  due  to  the  antagonism 
between  his  material  and  his  purpose  —  the  unfitness, 
in  other  words,  of  the  data  of  human  life  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  theoretic  demonstration.  In  this  instance  it 
is  the  effect  of  his  toiir  de  force  that  is  sacrificed.  Far 
more  frequently  and  much  more  seriously  the  convinc- 
ingness of  his  picture  of  life  is  vitiated  by  a  twisting 
of  its  elements  into  supports  for  his  thesis.  In  general 
he  achieves  the  aim  of  the  to2ir  de  force.  He  attains 
plausibility.  Everything  is  carefully  thought  out  from 
the  beginning.  Details  of  no  interest  in  themselves 
prove  to  have  a  bearing  on  the  plot ;  characters  of  no 
substance  prove  necessary  pieces  of  the  mosaic.  Things 
incredible  take  place  in  order  to  make  other  things 
seem  natural.  One  feels  combining  purpose  every- 
where. Your  doubts  are  foreseen,  your  objections  fore- 
stalled. You  are  discomfited,  not  persuaded.  And 
there  is  eminent,  crying  need  of  persuasion.  The  gen- 
eral effect  is  positively  that  of  argumentation. 

252 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

IV  f? 

There  is  one  element  of  Mr.  Meredith's  originality 
that  in  no  wise  eludes  analysis,  and  that  is  his  perver- 
sity. It  is  omnipresent  in  his  writings  and  always 
conspicuous.  It  is  so  intense  that  were  his  calm  less 
"  Olympian,  his  self-possession  less  complacent,  it  would 
seem  distinctly  neuropathic.  It  is,  however,  a  com- 
pletely integral  characteristic,  native  to  the  constitu- 
tion of  his  mind,  and  never,  I  think,  due  to,  or  alloyed 
with,  affectation  or  attitudinizing  of  any  kind.  His 
genius  is  quite  free  from  pose.  It  is  notable  for  a  cer- 
tain largeness  and  independence  quite  incompatible 
with  the  approbativeness  impUed  in  affectation.  His 
perversity  is  a  natural  bent  toward  the  artificial.  Its 
delight  is  in  disappointing  the  reader's  normal  expecta- 
tions. Simplicity  is  its  detestation.  If  the  idea  is 
simple,  its  statement  is  complicated.  If  it  is  particu- 
larly subtile,  its  expression  is  correspondingly  succinct. 
A  character,  if  unusual,  receives  a  commonplace  treat- 
ment, and  if  commonplace  itself,  is  assigned  some 
extravagance.  If  an  incident  is  trivial,  it  is  magnified 
into  importance  with  a  remarkable  ingenuity  or  given 
an  extraordinary  satiric  relief ;  if  it  is  truly  dramatic, 
it  is  distinctly  minimized.  The  author  has  apparently 
a  definite  dread  of  climaxes,  which  would  seem  instinc- 
tive if  he  were  not  here  as  elsewhere  perfectly  theoretic. 
His  perversity  is  dehberately  indulged,  doubtless  with 
some  theory  emulative  and  exaggerative  of  antique  prac- 

253 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

tice,  and  modified  into  modernness  by  reflection  on  the 
undramatic  unfolding  of  the  real  tragedies  of  life. 

The  complexity  of  human  nature,  always  a  theme 
of  the  true  novelist,  is  exhibited  by  Mr.  Meredith  with 
characteristic  originality.  You  are  shown  the  com- 
plexity, but  so  artificially  that  it  ceases  to  be  convinc- 
ing. Such  a  character  as  Diana  "Warwick,  for  example, 
the  favorite  probably  of  most  Meredithians,  is  the 
result  of  an  ambitious  and  elaborate  attempt  to  create 
an  embodiment  of  warring  impulses,  contradictory 
qualities,  in  picturesque  but  vital  consistency — a  char- 
acter, at  least,  whose  definite  personality  successfully 
dominates  its  inconsistencies.  It  is  a  successful  at- 
tempt only,  I  should  fancy,  to  the  sense  of  readers  who 
forget  a  portion  of  the  data  in  their  vivid  recollection 
of  the  rest.  When  Diana  commits  her  extravagant 
offence,  she  really  ceases  to  exist.  Her  personality  is 
dissipated;  she  becomes  another  individual.  Any  de- 
bate as  to  whether  she  would  have  been  likely  to  do 
such  a  thing  is  not  even  academic.  It  is  merely  in- 
quiring whether  one  kind  of  a  person  is  likely  to  do 
something  characteristic  of  a  wholly  different  person. 
This  may  conceivably  happen  in  life,  but  it  is  not  char- 
acteristic of  life,  and  therefore  in  art  it  has  only  the 
interest  of  a  paradox,  its  representation  being  fatal  to 
the  integrity  of  the  thing  represented.  The  complexity 
of  human  nature  is  not  what  is  shown.  What  is  shown 
is  the  cleverness  of  the  artist  in  shoring  up  into  plausi- 
bility something  inherently  incredible. 

254 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

The  most  noteworthy  example  of  this  perversity  is 
his  one  great  tragedy, "  The  Ordeal  of  Eichard  Feverel," 
his  first  and,  in  the  view  of  liis  most  thoroughgoing 
admirers,  his  greatest  book.  It  is  a  marvel  of  artifici- 
ahty  imposed  upon  the  reader  as  exactly  the  converse. 
It  assumes  to  record  the  remorseless  working  of  relent- 
less fate,  and  is  in  reaHty  a  remarkable  piece  of  imagi- 
native ingenuity  as  little  convincing  as  a  tract.  Its 
framework  and  premises  are  ingeniously  unnatural,  and 
it  contains  hardly  a  natural  person,  save  the  victims  of 
the  unnatural  conduct  of  the  others.  The  book  is  thus 
addressed  directly  to  the  nerves  rather  than  to  the 
mind  or  the  heart,  and  in  this  respect  is  no  more  a 
book  de  honne  foy  than  the  most  painful  of  Maupas- 
sant's. The  principle  against  which  it  offends  is  per- 
fectly plain.  The  element  of  fate  in  tragedy  to  be 
legitimate  must  be  fatalistic.  In  "  Feverel "  one  feels 
that  it  is  absolutely  facultative.  Eichard's  ordeal 
would  dissolve  into  the  simplest  of  idyls  at  several 
stages  in  the  development  of  the  story,  if  it  were  not 
for  the  author's  wilful  ingenuity,  exercised  to  the  end 
of  making  the  reader  writhe.  Bemg  so  quintessen- 
tially  artificial,  it  is  extremely  typical  of  the  succession 
of  novels  which  thus  ominously  it  introduced.  It  con- 
tains some  of  the  best  writing,  some  of  the  most  win- 
ning scenes,  some  of  the  truest  poetry  to  be  found  in 
Mr.  Meredith's  writings.  But  a  tragedy  of  which  the 
reader  resents  the  obviously  voluntary  predetermina- 
tion of  the  author  to  exact  the  utmost  possible  tribute 

255 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

of  distress  from  him  is  not  so  much  tragedy  as  melo- 
drama, and  melodrama  thoroughly  sophisticated.  Its 
psychology  places  it  on  a  high  plane  for  melodrama,  but 
cannot  disguise  its  character.  And  it  is  not  difficult  to 
see  in  the  author's  attitude  toward  his  needlessly  suf- 
fering characters  the  spirit  which  reveals  Parrhasius, 
studying  the  contortions  of  his  captive,  as  less  a  genu- 
ine artist  than  a  dilettante  d  outrance. 

Perversity  prevails  in  the  treatment  as  well  as  in 
the  substance  of  Mr.  Meredith's  fiction.  There  is  no 
other  instance  of  such  technical  wilfulness.  Many 
readers  are  repelled  by  what  they  term  the  obscurity  of 
his  style.  But  his  style  is  not  obscure  in  the  general 
sense  of  the  word.  He  has  a  wonderful  gift  of  expres- 
sion, and  can  not  only  say  clearly  the  most  recondite 
things,  but  give  a  recondite  turn  to  things  essentially 
quite  commonplace.  He  does  not  love  the  obscure, 
*but  hates  the  apparent.  He  has  that  "  horror  of  the 
obvious"  so  long  ago  as  Longinus  censured  as  hostile 
to  the  sublime.  And  as  one  cannot  always  avoid  the 
obvious,  especially  if  one  is  also  extremely  prolix,  he  does 
his  best  to  obscure  it.  His  vocabulary  is  never  at  a  loss 
for  a  telling  word  when  one  is  really  called  for.  He 
can  be  crispness  or  curtness  itself  at  need,  often  in- 
deed wonderfully  vivid,  sometimes  within  and  some- 
times without  and  sometimes  on  the  verge  of  the 
confines  of  taste,  in  his  pursuit  of  vividness ;  for  ex- 
ample, "He  read  and  his  eyes  became  horny"  —  of 
Dacier's   horror   and   amazement   at   the   evidence   of 

256 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

Diana's  treachery.  He  makes  few  phrases  that  one 
remembers,  however.  He  loads  a  phrase  with  meaning, 
but  it  is  apt  to  be  compression  without  pith,  and  often, 
in  greater  extension,  it  becomes  rhetorical  rather  than 
pungent,  though  rhetoric  that  is  never  tinctured  with 
insincerity.  But  where  he  cannot  be  telling,  and  even 
in  cases  where  he  might  so  easily  be  that  he  has  an 
opportunity  perversely  to  disappoint  you  by  not  being, 
he  is  exasperatingly  evasive. 

His  devotion  to  the  tricksy  spirit  of  Comedy  led  him 
early  to  emulate  her  elusiveness ;  the  interest  in  the 
game  grew  upon  him,  and  his  latest  books  are  marked 
by  the  very  mania  of  indirection  and  innuendo.  It  is 
not  obscurity  of  style  that  makes  it  difficult  to  follow  the 
will-o'-the-wisp  of  his  genius  disporting  itself  over,  it 
must  be  confessed,  the  marshiest  of  territory  often,  but 
the  actual  chevaux-de-frise  his  ingenuity  interposes  be- 
tween his  reader  and  his  meaning.  The  obscurity  lies 
in  his  whole  presentation  of  his  subject.  He  doles  it 
out  grudgingly,  and  endeavors  to  whip  your  interest  by 
tantalizing  your  perceptions.  The  elaborate  exordium 
of  "  Diana  of  the  Crossways  "  should  be  read  after  read- 
ing the  book.  The  prelude  of  "  The  Egoist "  can  be 
understood  at  all  only  as  a  postlude.  The  beginning  of 
"  Beauchamp's  Career "  is  essentially  a  peroration,  and 
in  reading  it  how  long  is  it  before  you  discover  that 
it  is  about  the  Crimean  War  you  are  reading  ?  If 
an  incident  is  imminent  he  defers  it ;  if  it  is  far  in  the 
future  he  puzzles  you  with  adumbrative  hints  of  it ;  if 

257 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

it  is  likely  he  masks  its  likelihood  by  presenting  it  fanci- 
fully ;  if  it  is  improbable  he  exhausts  ingenuity  in  ren- 
dering it  probable.  It  is  impossible  not  to  conceive  the 
notion  that  he  is  enjoying  himself  at  your  expense,  at 
least  that  he  is  the  host  having  a  good  time  at  his  own 
party.  It  is  not  an  occasional  but  a  frequent  experience 
to  find  the  key  to,  say,  three  pages  of  riddle  on  the 
fourth  page.  And  this  would  not  be  so  disconcerting 
as  it  is,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  riddle  of  the 
first  three  is  carefully  dissembled  under  the  deceitful 
aspect  of  something  palpably  preHminary ;  so  that  until 
you  come  to  the  key  you  are  not  conscious  of  the  exis- 
tence of  the  riddle  and  only  wonder  why  you  don't 
comprehend.  The  interest  of  the  dilettante  is  universal 
and  no  doubt  includes  the  pleasure  of  mystification. 
The  effect  produced  is,  however,  not  suspense,  which 
has  been  a  reliance  of  less  original  novelists,  but  dis- 
quiet. His  motive  is  to  keep  you  guessing.  He  only 
explains  when  you  have  given  it  up.  In  the  end  even 
the  reader  who  enjoys  guessing  must  lose  interest.  For 
other  readers  the  dulness  of  long  stretches  of  his  books 
must  be  appalHng.  A  great  part  of  the  art  of  fiction 
consists  in  making  the  filling  of  the  grand  construction 
interesting  and  significant.  But  this  demands  tempera- 
ment and  Mr.  Meredith  has  to  depend  upon  artifice. 
And  his  artifice  is  mainly  mystification.  It  is  the 
coquetry  of  comedy,  not  its  substance. 


258 


GEORGE  MEREDITH  (J/     J^ 


Mr.  Meredith  has  a  charming  essay  on  "  Comedy 
and  the  Uses  of  the  Comic  Spirit,"  which  discloses  one 
of  his  ideals.  He  feels  in  English  literature  the  lack  of 
a  Moliere.  But  for  this  lack  his  own  genius  might, 
one  suspects,  have  taken  a  different  turn.  But  for  this 
sprightly  essay,  at  all  events,  we  should  be  more  in  the 
dark  than  we  are  in  accounting  for  many  of  its  manifesta- 
tions. It  shows  how  complete  is  his  devotion  to  the  Comic 
Muse,  how  well  he  understands  her,  how  jealous  he  is  of 
her  prerogatives  and  how  he  resents  perversion  of  her 
principles.  "  Purely  comic,  addressed  to  the  intellect," 
he  says  of  one  of  his  illustrations  ;  of  another, "  It  is  not 
the  laughter  of  the  mind."  The  useful  secondary  title 
of  "  The  Egoist "  is  "  A  Comedy  in  Narrative."  "  Evan 
Harrington  "  is  early  called  "  our  comedy."  One  needs 
the  warning  in  order  to  perceive  the  point  of  view. 
It  is  at  first  thought  singular  that  they  are  among  the 
most  prolix  as  they  certainly  are  among  the  most 
characteristic  of  his  books,  but  it  is  because  in  them 
his  technic  is  most  explicitly  theoretic,  most  prede- 
termined by  his  parti  pris.  In  them  he  gives  him- 
self free  rein,  and  having  written  "  Comedy "  at  the 
head  of  his  story  indulges  himself  to  the  top  of  his 
bent.  The  "  comedy  in  narrative,"  though  for  that 
reason  perhaps  it  affords  his  talent,  which  is  as  wilful 
and  undisciplined  as  it  is  vital,  a  congenial  cadre,  is  a 
hybrid  genre.     The  comedy  is  often  death  to  the  narra- 

259 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

live.  As  a  story  Mr.  Meredith's  best  book  would  be 
better  for  a  closer  resemblance  to  the  ordinary  respecta- 
ble novel  —  for  which,  indeed,  at  a  certain  point  so  far 
as  the  story  is  concerned,  one  would  often  willingly 
exchange  it.  The  necessities  of  comedy,  the  irruption 
of  new  characters,  their  disappearance  after  they  have 
done  their  turn,  expectation  balked  by  shifting  situa- 
tions, the  frequent  postponement  of  the  d(5nouement 
when  it  particularly  impends,  and  the  alleviation  of 
impatience  by  a  succession  of  subordinate  climaxes  — 
all  the  machinery  of  the  stage,  in  fact  —  impair  the 
narrative.  A  novelist  with  a  theoretic  devotion  to 
comedy  inevitably  drifts  into  the  stage  atmosphere, 
which  is,  of  course,  a  convention,  an  obvious  illusion,  of 
wliich  we  do  not  exact,  but  to  which  we  accord,  con- 
cessions so  that  things  may  be  presented  at  all.  Except 
in  "  Harry  Richmond,"  Mr.  Meredith  simply  never 
abandons  himself  to  the  current  of  romance. 

Nor  is  it  the  narrative  alone  that  suffers ;  the  play  is 
so  much  the  thing  that  the  characters  are  modified,  often, 
in  the  direction  of  effective  representation.  The  subtle- 
ties of  the  personages  in  "  The  Egoist,"  for  example,  are 
either  broadened  into  types  or  twisted  in  slight  metamor- 
phosis to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  enormously  clever 
plot  and  its  veritably  "  Box-and-Cox  "-like  development. 
In  "  Evan  Harrington "  it  takes  even  Mr.  Meredith's 
cleverness  to  make  plausible  the  improbable  conduct 
which  nevertheless  a  dozen  times  he  has  to  assign  to 
some  of  his  actors  in  order  to  defer  the  denouement. 

260 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

Heroes  do  not  die  in  the  middle  of  their  history,  he 
exclaims  reassuringly,  when  Evan  meets  with  an  acci- 
dent. No,  one  is  tempted  to  reply,  but  it  seems  that 
they  may  whiffle  like  the  chameleon  to  accommodate  the 
action  of  a  comedy.  And  when  the  spirit  as  well  as 
the  essential  structure  of  the  story  is  resolutely  comic — 
keeping  the  ball  constantly  in  the  air  —  on  the  one 
hand  the  dramatic  quality  itself  loses  intensity,  and,  on 
the  other,  no  cleverness  can  resist  the  siren- whispers  of 
farce.  Farce  abounds  in  Mr.  Meredith's  novels,  in 
spite  of  his  frequently  expressed  disdain  for  it.  It  is 
simply  the  farce  of  whimsicality  instead  of  that  of 
grossness.  And  the  tantalizing  manner  in  which  the 
dramatic  is  dissembled  in  "  Evan  Harrington  "  is  typi- 
cal of  the  way  in  which  in  many  other  instances  the 
reader's  interest  is  allowed  gradually  to  escape  him, 
while  he  is  serenely  pursuing  his  consistently  comic 
course. 

One  effect  of  this  predetermined  comic  treatment  is 
the  extremely  unfortunate  one  of  leaving  the  impres- 
sion of  levity.  Who  can  take  seriously  the  prelude  of 
"  The  Egoist,"  for  example  ?  The  author's  fundamental 
seriousness  must  be  admitted,  but  it  is  to  be  in- 
ferred from  the  gravity  of  his  themes,  and  their  often 
tragic  development.  In  treatment  it  is  frequently 
fatally  compromised  by  the  unrelieved  persistency  of 
the  light  touch.  He  is  often  enough  heavy-handed, 
but  always  in  the  pursuit  of  deftness.  He  is  elabo- 
rately, systematically,  awkwardly  airy.     He  is  so  in- 

261 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

veterately  theoretic  that  no  detail  of  his  theme  swerves 
him  from  his  addiction  in  treatment  to  "the  extenu- 
ated style,"  as  the  old  rhetoric  called  it.  He  is  con- 
vinced that  the  substance  should  make  its  just  impres- 
sion by  its  own  weight;  that  any  addition  of  energy 
in  its  presentation  is  surplusage ;  that  its  presentation 
is  merely  illuminative ;  that  only  a  rude  taste  could 
call  for  any  underscoring  reassurance  as  to  the  ar- 
tist's own  sympathies  and  earnestness.  That  is  all 
to  go  without  saying.  One  perceives  that  he  is  more 
civilized  than  civilization,  and  is  tempted  to  ascribe 
the  exaggeration  of  his  extenuation,  so  to  say,  to  an 
eccentricity  born  of  his  impatience  with  his  English 
environment,  culpably  most  lacking,  no  doubt,  in  pre- 
cisely this  respect  of  the  light  touch.  Perversity  being 
a  marked  characteristic  of  his  talent,  he  illustrates  the 
other  extreme. 

There  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  throughout  his  books 
a  patter  of  banter  that  is  disconcerting,  disquieting,  and 
finally  irritating.  It  is  irony  run  to  seed.  It  is  so  con- 
stant that  it  loses  its  relief.  It  ceases  to  illuminate  by 
setting  the  subject  in  an  unaccustomed  light,  and  often 
obscures  it  by  its  inappositeness.  The  reader  loses  the 
point  of  view.  Irony  to  be  appreciated  must  be  felt  as 
irony.  One  not  only  tires  of  too  much  of  it,  but  grows 
uncertain  of  its  character  when  the  distinction  between 
its  statement  and  its  significance,  its  real  and  its  super- 
ficial meaning,  ceases  to  be  evident.  The  constant  with- 
holding of  the  expected  characterization,  and  the  constant 

262 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

substitution  for  it  of  one  whose  aptness  depends  upon 
the  perception  of  the  reader,  require  that  the  reader's 
powers  of  perception  should  not  be  fettered  or  exhausted. 
Mr.  Meredith  in  the  matter  of  irony,  as  in  other  phases 
of  his  ineradicable  indirectness,  flatters  one's  cleverness 
at  first,  but  in  the  end  he  fatigues  it.  Apparently  his 
aim  is  to  circumvent  it,  and  sooner  or  later  he  succeeds 
because,  however  much  cleverness  one  may  possess,  one 
feels  that  one  has  other  uses  for  it.  Above  all  one 
resents  the  draft,  the  drain,  upon  one's  confidence.  We 
have  to  take  the  ironical  author  too  much  on  trust. 

It  is  not  merely  the  detachment  so  often,  and  so 
literally,  recommended  to  the  artist  that  he  illustrates. 
He  is  not  merely  detached,  he  is  obliterated.  All  he 
shows  us  of  himself  is  his  talent ;  his  standpoint  is  to  be 
divined.  And  not  only  to  be  effective  but  to  preserve 
its  identity  irony  requires  a  standpoint  that  is  obvious. 
We  need  to  feel  that  it  is  not  in  earnest  if  it  is  to  serve 
a  purpose  of  any  earnestness,  and  we  need  to  feel  that 
the  writer  is  in  earnest  in  order  to  perceive  that  his 
expression  is  not.  But  it.  is  a  detail  of  Mr.  Meredith's 
general  elusiveness  that  he  does  not  often  make  us  feel 
this  with  any  force.  His  theory  is  that  there  is  nothing 
flat-footed  about  the  Comic  Spirit,  and  his  endeavor  to 
incarnate  this  spirit  is  so  thoroughgoing  as  to  require  the 
complete  suppression  of  his  personality  even  when  it  is 
needed  as  a  guarantee  of  his  seriousness.  Nothing  of 
the  kind  in  the  curiosities  of  literature  is  more  ex- 
traordinary than  this  unexampled  abuse  of  perhaps  the 

263 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

one  figure  of  rhetoric  which  one  would  say  a  writer 
with  a  real  talent  for  it  would  for  that  very  reason  be 
under  no  temptation  to  abuse.  Mr.  Meredith's  talent 
for  irony,  nevertheless,  is  not  to  be  denied.  One  of  his 
very  best  characters,  the  Wise  Youth  Adrian  in  "  Eich- 
ard  Feverel "  is  wholly  built  up  out  of  it,  for  example. 
His  talent  is,  however,  less  marked  than  his  taste  for 
it,  and  perhaps  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  anomaly, 
which  is,  after  all,  thus  only  another  of  the  many 
anomalies  inseparable  from  the  practice  of  art  with  the 
dilettante  inspiration. 

VI  ^^  , 

'His  preoccupation  with  "  brain-stuff,"  moreover, 
involves  one  serious  defect  in  liis  picture  of  hfe :  it 
minimizes  passion.  There  is  infinite  talk  in  Mr.  Mere- 
dith's books  about  love.  He  has  written  a  sonnet  series 
on  "  Modern  Love,"  indeed,  most  interesting  in  its  intri- 
cacies. But  love  as  a  passion  he  treats  mainly,  one  may 
say,  in  trituration.  There  are  express  experiments  in 
the  other  direction.  The  idyl  of  Eichard  Feverel  and 
Lucy  is  as  pretty,  as  charming,  as  its  slightly  eighteenth- 
century  atmosphere,  its  Ferdinand  and  Miranda  con- 
ceits, the  playful  but  palpable  aloofness  of  the  author, 
will  permit.  The  gondola  courtship  of  Nevil  Beau- 
champ  is  more  than  promising,  but  the  experienced 
reader  of  Meredith  is  not  surprised  to  encounter  later 
even  less  than  non-fulfilment.  The  love  of  Eosamund 
Culling    for    her    husband's    nephew    is    caressingly 

264 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

sketched  because  it  is  recondite,  but  it  is  distinctly  a 
minor  and  incidental  element  of  the  story.  In  gen- 
eral, anything  projJerly  to  be  called  passion  is  pre- 
sented with  diluting  playfulness.  Even  in  seriousness, 
its  weakness,  not  its  force,  is  the  side  most  emphasized.; 
Mr,  Meredith  seems  to  care  rather  more  for  Nevil 
Beauchamp  than  for  most  of  his  characters,  but  he  is 
so  interested  in  preserving  him  from  heroism,  in  his 
theoretic  fashion,  that  he  makes  his  passion  not  only 
the  least  persistent  but  the  least  intense  phase  of  his 
energy,  which  is  otherwise  depicted  as  extravagant. 
Through  the  representativeness  of  Nevil's  character, 
which  is  much  insisted  on,  one  is  made  to  reflect  on  the 
transience  and  lack  of  depth  in  the  passion  of  the 
average  young  man,  however  ebullient  he  may  be.  Can 
anything  be  tamer  than  the  love-making  of  "  Diana " 
or  more  debonair  than  that  in  "  Harry  Eichmond  "  or 
more  insubstantial  than  that  in  "  The  Egoist "  ? 

~  But  "  The  Tragic  Comedians "  furnishes  the  most 
striking  instance  of  Mr.  Meredith's  disposition  to  psy- 
chologize love  out  of  all  passionate  intensity.  If  "  The 
Tragic  Comedians"  had  been  sustained  to  the  end  it 
would  assuredly  have  been  the  fine  thing  it  just  misses 
being.  But,  like  so  many  of  Mr.  Meredith's  books,  it 
is  not  sustained.  Half-way  through  the  story,  indeed, 
the  tragic  comedians  may  be  said  to  be  metamorphosed 
into  comic  tragedians,  through  the  fading  out  of  the 
elevating  intensity  of  their  mutual  passion.  As  else- 
where, the  thesis,  not  the  characters,  is  the  main  point, 

265 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

and  tlie  thesis  is  that  the  obstacles  to  the  smooth  run- 
ning of  the  course  of  true  love  are  often  not  external 
but  psychological.  There  is  of  course  a  very  consider- 
able external  obstacle  in  the  opposition  of  the  heroine's 
parents.  But  it  is  made  plain  enough  that  this  obstacle 
would  not  have  proved  effective  had  it  not  been  for  the 
alternate  weakness  of  the  lovers  themselves,  who  are, 
as  the  title  shows,  really  actors  at  bottom  from  the 
start.  The  effective  obstacles  to  love  which  is  also 
passion  being,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  proportion  to  its 
intensity,  external  and  not  psychological,  the  author  is 
obliged  by  his  thesis  to  diminish  the  intensity  of  what 
at  the  outset  is  portrayed  as  a  passion  of  extraordinary 
violence;  and  to  make  this  plausible  the  essentially 
theatrical  character  of  the  lovers  has  to  be  subsumed, 
as  the  metaphysicians  say.  The  result  is,  as  usual,  that 
the  picture,  if  true,  is  exceptional.  It  is  another  con- 
tribution to  the  cairn  of  the  recondite.  But  what  I 
wish  to  illustrate  here  is  that  the  author's  tunnelling 
and  labyrinthine  propensity  for  psychological  analysis 
readily  reconciles  itself  to  the  sacrifice  of  anything  like 
sustained  and  ardent  passion,  even  in  a  love  story  that 
ostensibly  chronicles  the  most  spontaneous  and  abso- 
lutely unreasonable  abandonment  to  it.  Other  psycho- 
logical novelists  do  not  thus  dispense  with  so  important 
an  element  of  both  interest  and  verisimilitude.  Mr. 
Meredith's  insensitiveness  to  it  witnesses  the  dilettante 
spirit  indifferent  to  intensity  of  all  kinds  except  that 
which  is  very  special  and  express  and  therefore,  I  sup- 

266 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

pose,  really  "worth  while"— like  the  Squire's  superb 
outburst  in  "  Harry  Richmond,"  for  example,  or  the 
description  of  Nevil  Beauchamp's  delirium,  which  is  a 
wonderful  tour  de  force.  Undoubtedly,  too,  intensity  of 
any  simple  and  fundamental  order  is  prohibited  by  his 
theory  of  the  comic  which  exerts  such  an  empire  over 
his  practice.  Love  in  Mr.  Meredith's  books  wears  the 
aspect  perhaps  best  pleasing  to  the  Comic  Muse  -  of 
which  he  is  so  enamoured,  but  it  is  hardly  the  passion 
"  that  makes  the  world  go  round." 

VII 

Nevertheless  —  and,  at  least  superficially,  the  cir- 
cumstance may  be  accounted  singular  —  a  considerable 
part  of  Mr,  Meredith's  vogue  is  probably  due  to  his 
treatment  of  women,  which  is  very  special,  and  for 
that  reason  no  doubt  has  especially  won  the  suffrages 
of  "  the  sex,"  as  he  is  fond  of  calling  it.  The  appro- 
bativeness  of  "  the  sex  "  at  its  present  stage  of  evolu- 
tion is  perhaps  manifested  quite  as  much  with  refer- 
ence to  evaluation  and  appreciation  as  a  sex  as  it  is 
individually.  It  can  hardly  have  escaped  observers  of 
such  phenomena  that  it  is  as  a  sex  that,  currently, 
women  particularly  appreciate  being  treated  as  individ- 
uals. The  more  marked  such  treatment  is,  the  more 
justice  they  feel  is  done  to  the  sex.  Mr.  Meredith's 
treatment  of  them  is  in  this  respect  very  marked — so 
much  so,  in  fact,  that  he  obliterates  very  often  the  broad 

267 


VICTORIAN   PROSE  MASTERS 

distinction  usually  made  between  the  young  girl  and  the 
married  woman.  Diana,  for  example,  leaves — in  some 
respects — a  maidenly,  and  some  of  his  maidens  produce 
a  matronly,  impression.  With  his  women  readers  he  has 
accordingly  been,  perhaps,  particularly  successful.  He 
makes  it  unmistakably  clear  that  women  are  psycho- 
logically worth  while,  complex,  intricate  and  multifarious 
in  mind  as  well  as  complicated  in  nature.  He  makes  a 
point  of  this  and  underscores  it,  in  a  way  that  produces 
a  certain  effect  of  novelty  by  the  stress  he  lays  on  it. 
The  justice  so  fully  rendered  is  given  the  fillip  of  seem- 
ing tardy  justice,  and  therefore  an  element  of  Mr.  Mere- 
dith's originality  among  writers  of  fiction.  This  is  a 
good  deal,  but  I  think  it  is  witness  of  a  still  greater  origi- 
nality in  him  that  he  goes  still  further.  He  lays  even 
greater  stress  upon  the  fact  that  the  being  thus  in- 
tricately interesting  and  worthy  of  scrutiny  from  the 
constitution  of  her  indi\'idual  personality  is  also  that 
most  interesting  of  all  personalities,  a  feminine  one. 
He  adds  the  requisite  touch  of  chivalry.  He  is,  after 
all,  a  true  aficionado  of  "  the  sex."  He  can  be  trusted 
to  understand,  not  to  be  too  literal,  not  to  forget  that 
the  singularization  implied  in  apotheosis  is  a  very  dif- 
ferent thing  from  that  involved  in  limitation.  Women 
are  to  be  discriminated  as  individuals,  like  men,  but  the 
fact  that  they  possess  in  common  and  as  women  a  cer- 
tain distinctive  quality  is,  above  all,  not  to  be  lost  sight 
of.  This  is  the  permanent,  the  ewig,  fact  about  them. 
Only  it  is  to  be  taken  as  a  crown,  not  as  a  mere  label. 

268 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

Having  thus  won  their  confidence,  he  may  say  what 
he  chooses  without  risk  of  misinterpretation  at  their 
hands.  For  example :  "  I  expect  that  Woman  will  be 
the  last  thing  civilized  by  Man,"  or  that  the  Fools' 
Paradise  is  chiefly  inhabited  by  women  or  "  by  women 
and  a  certain  limp  order  of  men."  One  could  cite 
such  instances  by  the  score.  He  runs  no  risk  of  being 
thought  to  have  "a  contempt  for  women,"  of  being 
thought  superficial,  that  is  to  say.  His  talk  about 
women  is  really  as  clever  as  that.  A  celebrated  novel- 
ist of  the  present  day  is  said  to  have  remarked  that  he 
had  reached  a  point  finally  when  he  could  say  any- 
thing he  Hked.  Mr.  Meredith  has  always  been  able  to 
do  that  in  the,  for  fiction,  immense  field  concerned 
with  women.  It  is — may  one  say  ?  — almost  touching 
to  note  the  success  with  which  by  the  simple  means 
of  compensatory  magnification  he  contrives  to  be  most 
uncompromising  in  his  treatment  of  their  defects. 
They  have  waited  so  long,  some  of  them  doubtless 
think,  to  be  taken  seriously  in  just  this  way  and  to  just 
this  extent ! 

One  of  his  notable  contentions,  which  he  thus  sets 
forth  in  security,  is  that  women  are  morally  quite  as 
complex  as  men,  and  in  virtue  of  an  equally  developed 
organization  rather  than  of  a  contradictory  and  capri- 
cious nature.  This  is  one  of  his  main  themes.  The 
sexes  have  their  differences,  as  he  frequently  points 
out,  but  he  finds  an  exact  equivalence  here.  And  the 
idea  is,  in  the  prominence  that  it  receives  from  him, 

269 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

probably  a  genuine  contribution  to  fiction.  Other 
^^Tite^s,  notably  Shakespeare  (but  one  can  hardly  be 
theoretic  without  differing  from  Shakespeare),  depict 
the  moral  side  of  women  as  both  simpler  and  more 
closely  allied  with  the  entire  nature.  The  women  of 
fiction  are  apt  to  be  generally  classifiable  as  in  the  main 
— and  much  more  than  the  men — either  good  or  bad. 
All  sorts  of  deductions  have  proceeded  from  this  gen- 
eral assumption  —  such  as,  for  example,  that  women 
being  less  exposed  to  temptation  on  account  of  greater 
seclusion  have  developed  less  principle ;  that  when  a 
woman  is  bad  at  all  she  is  more  apt  to  be  thoroughly 
bad ;  that  goodness  in  woman  is  more  fundamental, 
being  so  completely  the  working  hj^othesis  of  her 
existence,  practically  considered ;  that  her  greater  emo- 
tional development  involves  more  ideality  in  good 
conduct  and  consequently  less  of  it  —  that  is  to  say, 
more  cynicism — in  bad. 

With  Mr.  Meredith  all  this  is  changed  by  endowing 
women  with  an  organization  morally  equivalent  —  and 
perhaps  one  may  even  say  ethically  identical  —  with 
that  of  men.  He  considers  their  responsibility  the 
same,  and,  as  a  consequence,  neither  enjoys,  in  virtue  of 
any  singularity  of  native  constitution,  an  immunity  de- 
nied to  the  other.  He  permits  himself  to  exercise  the 
same  freedom  in  his  treatment  of  his  women  that  he 
indulges  in  dealing  with  his  men,  and  makes  them  do 
anything  he  chooses  to  have  them  in  order  to  illustrate 
any  point  he  wishes  to  make,  exactly  as  if  their  moral 

270 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

actions  were  as  unpredictable,  as  facultative  with  him, 
as  those  of  even  his  adventurers  and  feather-headed 
enthusiasts  of  the  opposite  sex.  They  are  played  upon 
by  an  equally  wide  range  of  conflicting  emotions,  de- 
sires, temptations,  and  their  errors  are  quite  as  much 
due  to  their  baser  selves.  When  they  succumb,  they 
fall  no  lower,  having  suffered  no  perversion  of  their 
higher  nature ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  no  complemen- 
tary exaltation  results  from  what  is  often  exhibited  by 
other  artists  as  an  uncontrollable  deflection  of  this  same 
higher  nature.  Diana  Warwick  is  an  instance  of  the 
former;  and,  among  others.  Lord  Ormont's  Aminta  is 
a  striking  one  of  the  latter,  her  infidehty  needing  to  be 
explained  and  minimized  by  an  amount  of  philistine 
machinery  which  makes  her  out  rather  an  unfeeling 
creature  at  bottom  and  makes  one  long  for  a  touch  of 
human  nature  —  like  George  Sand's.  Is  there  a  trace, 
one  wonders,  of  what  he  calls  the  "  burgess "  even  in 
this  free  and  elastic  devotee  of  ideality  ?  He  can  de- 
pict Diana's  baseness,  but  sin  of  the  kind  involved  in 
following  the  affections  into  an  extra-legal  situation,  he 
twice  saves  her  from.  He  is  a  shade  less  careful  with 
the  marquise  of  "  Beauchamp's  Career."  But  even  the 
Frenchwoman  he  saves  —  from  everything  but  bitter 
humiliation.  One  perceives  the  limits  his  chivalry  sets. 
Nevertheless,  it  permits  him  to  recoup  himself  now 
and  then  in  sacrificing  the  innocence  which  is  usually 
insistently  associated  with  the  virtue  of  women.  No 
writer  has  a  more  abiding  sense  of  the  charm  of  women, 

271 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

that  charm  which  is  so  peculiar  to  them  that  when  it  is 
possessed  by  men  it  is  only  characterizable  as  feminine 
charm.  He  is  haunted  by  it,  as  evinced  in  their  phy- 
sique, their  manner,  their  movements,  Diana  "  swims 
to  the  tea-table  "  —  all  his  heroines  "  swim  "  in  walking. 
He  lingers  over  minute,  caressing  descriptions  of  their 
beauty — at  somewhat  confusing  length  over  Clara  Mid- 
dleton's  features,  for  example,  though  he  is  quite  aware, 
as  he  says  elsewhere,  that  a  minute  description  of  a  face 
precludes  a  definite  impression.  But  charm  in  his 
women  is  never  incompatible  with  a  kind  of  knowingness 
that  makes  innocence,  strictly  so-called,  as  little  a  char- 
acteristic of  them  as  it  is  of  the  opposite  sex.  They 
have  a  great  deal  of  self-reliance,  of  independence,  of 
clairvoyance,  such  as  even  in  men,  one  would  say,  is 
usually  the  fruit  of  experience.  Such  an  exception  as 
Dahlia,  Rhoda  Fleming's  sister,  who  is  incredibly  cred- 
ulous, is  so  marked  an  exception  as  of  herself  to  prove 
the  rule.  Even  the  pusillanimous  Letitia  in  "  The 
Egoist "  knows  very  well  what  she  is  doing,  and  one 
hardly  resents  her  sacrifice  to  her  extraordinary 
minotaur. 

Innocence  considered  as  a  mental  state  is  undoubt- 
edly open  to  the  objection  of  insipidity  —  like  the 
amiability  of  an  unfortified  character.  Innocence, 
however,  as  an  attribute  of  the  soul  exerts  a  perennial 
charm.  Perhaps  nothing  else  quite  takes  its  place, 
attractive  as  the  "  brain-stuff "  which  Mr.  Meredith 
exalts   incontestably  is.     And  this,  no  doubt,  is  why, 

272 


GEOEGE  MEREDITH 

since  ex  hypothed  it  is  irrecoverable,  its  loss  is  usually 
deplored.  I  think  even  about  Mr.  Meredith's  maidens 
there  is  apt  to  be  quite  as  much  sparkle  as  bloom — at 
least,  about  his  successes,  Clara  Middleton  and  Cecilia 
Halkett,  for  example.  But  certainly  in  his  protagonist, 
Diana  Warwick,  he  asks  us  to  solace  ourselves  with 
brilliancy  and  temperament  for  the  absence  of  the 
finer  flavor  of  innocence.  "  Diana "  is  the  book  in 
which  his  ideal  of  the  equivalence — as  distinguished  from 
the  mere  interdependence — of  the  sexes  is  most  explic- 
itly exposed,  though  everywhere  in  his  novels  one  finds 
evidence  of  it,  and,  as  an  important  deduction  in  detail 
from  this  general  proposition,  the  according  to  women 
of  a  sentimental  freedom  corresponding  to  the  grosser 
liberty  condoned  in  men.  The  unworthiness  of  the 
old  pursuer-and-pursued  sex-division  yields  to  the  jus- 
tice of  permitting  woman  the  same  spontaneous  in- 
terest in  the  other  sex  that  is  allowed  to  man,  instead 
of  confining  such  interest  to  reciprocation ;  and  the 
further  step  is,  perhaps  necessarily,  therefore,  taken  of 
placing  her  sentimental  irregularities  upon  the  same 
plane  with  his  excesses.  Serious  flirtation,  in  a  word, 
of  the  Cehmene-Millamant  order  (those  ladies  are 
great  favorites  with  Mr.  Meredith)  is  relatively  as 
venial  in  her  case  as  are  excesses  in  his  —  and  is  privi- 
leged to  the  same  promiscuity.  The  question  of  moral 
reprehensibility,  of  course,  is  quite  aside,  though  the 
impHcation  would  be  that,  admitting  degrees  in  moral 
reprehensibility,  they  would  in  this  parallel   be  the 

273 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

same.  Any  insisteuce  that  women  should  be  senti- 
mentally restricted,  on  the  part  of  men  who  permit 
themselves  experiences  of  the  kind  Jeremy  Collier 
quaintly  calls  latitudinarian,  is  made  by  ]\Ir.  Meredith 
to  appear  inseparable  from  what  he  plainly  regards  as  the 
feminine  ideal  of  the  Grand  Turk,  "  Men  may  have 
rounded  Seraglio  Point.  They  have  not  yet  doubled 
Cape  Turk,"  is  one  of  Diana's  sententious  deliverances. 
"  Let  woman  have  the  widest  sensational  liberty  she 
likes  within  the  confines  of  virtue,"  he  argues.  "  If 
you  wince  at  the  phenomena  involved  —  her  dangUng 
poets  like  Arthur  Moore,  her  superannuated  lovers  and 
their  priggish  nephews,  her  entire  necessarily  second- 
rate  retinue  and  her  easy  acquiescence  in  its  second- 
rateness  —  either  you  are  interested  and  therefore 
incapable  of  fairness  or  you  are  an  outsider  as  pedantic 
and  arri4r4  as  Alceste.  Wliat  is  this  bloom  of  inno- 
cence you  prize  so  highly  and  possess  so  Httle  of  ? 
Merely  the  desideratum  of  a  crude,  not  to  say  savage, 
instinct  of  the  masterful  male,  uncivilized  and  un- 
developed. Evolution  will  inevitably  dispose  of  it  in 
due  season,  and  meantime  it  would  be  the  part  of  wis- 
dom in  you  to  wince  less  and  bfe  worthier." 

At  all  events,  innocence  in  the  sense  of  simplic- 
ity is  rather  pointedly  excluded  from  Mr.  Meredith's 
feminine  ideal.  ,  And  it  follows  naturally,  perhaps, 
that,  having  set  up  "the  sex"  in  a  more  elaborate 
spiritual  organization  than  is  usually  conceded  to  it 
by  those  who  affirm  it  to  be  nearer  to  nature  than  the 

274 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

other,  he  should  exalt  its  claims  to  standards  of  its 
own.  This  is  the  other  main  proposition  that  he  is 
fond  of  enforcing — or  rather,  considering  his  inveterate 
elusiveness,  of  allowing  it  to  be  divined  that  he  advo- 
cates. Women  have  been  long  enough  what  men  like 
them  to  be,  what  men  make  them.  It  is  time  that 
they  imposed  their  own  ideal  and  became  a  little  more 
exacting.  Let  them  study  their  own  independence  as 
the  one  priceless  possession,  exalt  their  dignity  as 
women  and  extort  from  masculine  fairness  conformity 
to  their  order  of  aspiration.  Let  man,  on  the  other 
hand,  learn  that  woman  is  never  so  admirable  as  when 
she  substitutes  for  the  motive  of  pleasing  him  the 
nobler  one  of  realizing  her  own  destiny  and  following 
her  own  star,  developing  to  its  highest  potency  her 
own  individuality. 

Some  such  view  as  this  I  gather,  at  all  events,  is  the 
basis  of  Mr.  Meredith's  infinite  talk  about  "  the  sex," 
and  of  his  various  incarnations  of  what  to  him  is  the 
evjig  weibliche.  It  is  doubtless  an  inspiring  view, 
though,  as  I  have  intimated,  its  novelty,  perhaps,  con- 
sists largely  in  its  emphasis.  There  are  times  and 
places,  eras  and  environments,  in  which  the  patronage 
of  women  by  men  has  appeared  rudimentary  and 
ridiculous,  just  as  there  are  others — and  perhaps  in 
his  own  he  has  found  this  especially  true  —  in  which 
a  certain  degree  of  dependence  and  insipidity  in  women 
forms  a  part  of  the  masculine  ideal  of  them.  And  the 
fact  that  Mr.  Meredith's  women  are  to  many  readers 

275 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

less  effective  than  many  of  their  sisters  in  fiction  limned 
by  greater  artists  is  not  destructive  of  his  general  philo- 
sophic view.  But  heretofore,  in  a  general  way,  when 
an  identical  standard  of  innocence  has  been  advocated 
for  the  two  sexes,  it  has  been  the  standard  of  women. 
Nevertheless,  so  old  is  the  subject  of  the  relations  of 
the  sexes  that  there  are  reasons  for  doubting  if  his 
view  is  at  all  certain  to  get  itself  established  —  if  it  is 
not  rather  destined  at  most  to  prove  a  view  of  what  is 
called  a  "  period  of  transition."  Women  themselves, 
even  women  richly  endowed  with  "  brain-stuff,"  being 
the  practical  and  conservative  creatures  Mr.  Meredith 
frequently  calls  them,  cannot  be  relied  upon  with  any 
certainty  to  take  his  view  of  their  privileges.  It  may 
seem  logical  and  only  fair,  from  a  speculative  point  of 
view,  but  innocence  of  heart  is  such  an  important  asset 
with  them  that  the  exchange  of  it  for  the  satisfaction 
to  be  gained  by  getting  sensations  out  of  the  emotions 
of  others  —  as  flirtation,  for  example,  might  be  defined 
—  is  likely  to  seem  a  risk. 

For  the  real  obstacle  to  setting  up  a  parallel  be- 
tween w^omen's  sentimental  and  men's  grosser  extrava- 
gances is  that  innocence  of  heart  is  lost  in  the  one  case 
and  not  in  the  other.  In  the  latter,  efficacious  deter- 
gents for  the  resulting  stain  —  which  is,  of  course, 
ideally  speaking,  detestable  —  are  not  inaccessible,  the 
heart  not  being  in  any  way  in  question.  In  the  former 
this  organ  incurs  the  peril  of  either  petrifaction  or  per- 
version.    It  involves  the  relation  of  familiarity  with- 

276 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

out  intimacy — the  exact  converse  of  the  true  sexual 
relation.  The  stakes  may  not  be  high  and  the  player  is 
generally  sure  of  winning,  but  her  fastidiousness  is  the 
entrance  fee,  her  opponents  are  apt  to  be  her  inferiors, 
and  the  counters,  which  receive  a  good  deal  of  handling 
in  the  course  of  the  game,  are  her  own  charms.  Diana's 
were  burnished  or  tarnished  in  the  process,  as  one 
chooses  to  look  at  it.  But  it  is  a  little  significant  that 
a  man  of  exceptionally  large  heart  combined  with  ex- 
ceptional phlegm  had  to  be  provided  for  the  apprecia- 
tion of  what  was  left  of  her.  One  can  hardly  avoid 
noting  the  fact  as  part  of  the  artificiality  of  her  history. 
In  real  Ufe,  it  is  to  be  feared,  the  situation  would  have 
called  for  a  character  far  more  nearly  resembling  the 
undiscouraged  chevalier  of  Manon  Lescaut  —  a  truly 
lamentable  pair,  these  two,  but  quick  with  a  humanity 
denied  to  the  theoretic  creations  of  a  novehst  specula- 
tively occupied  with  the  relations  of  the  sexes.  It  is 
perhaps  possible  that  the  Manon  of  the  future  will  be  a 
Diana,  in  virtue  of  her  superior  "  brain-stufP."  There 
would  be  an  element  of  variety,  no  doubt,  in  women's 
losing  their  approbativeness  as  regards  either  the  ad- 
miration or  the  respect  of  the  opposite  sex,  and  this 
sex  is  one  to  which  variety  in  the  other  has  always 
strongly  appealed.  One  thing,  however,  is,  I  suppose, 
to  be  accepted  as  so  certain  that  possibly  Mr.  Mere- 
dith's suggested  reform  will  prove  fatal  to  the  very 
equilibrium  it  seeks  to  establish:  Whether  or  no 
women  are  to  cease  to  be  what  men  wish,  it  is  certain 

277 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

that  men,  on  their  side,  will  continue  to  be  what  women 
make  them.  The  "  view  "  taken  in  the  following  para- 
graph, which  has  nothing  theoretic  about  it,  to  be  sure, 
will  as  certainly  be  that  of  the  future  as  it  has  been 
of  the  past : 

"And  I  say  I  think  the  world  is  like  Captain 
Esmond's  company  I  spoke  of  anon ;  and  could  you  see 
every  man's  career  in  life  you  would  find  a  woman  clog- 
ging him;  or  clinging  round  his  march  and  stopping 
him ;  or  cheering  him  and  goading  him ;  or  beckoning 
him  out  of  her  chariot  so  that  he  goes  up  to  her,  and 
leaves  the  race  to  be  run  without  him ;  or  bringing  him 
the  apple  and  saying  '  Eat ' ;  or  fetching  him  the  dag- 
gers and  whispering  '  Kill !  yonder  lies  Duncan,  and  a 
crown  and  an  opportunity.' " 


VIII  c  , 

In  any  case,  however,  Mr.  Meredith's  treatment  of 
women  is  distinctly  an  imaginative  treatment  and  re- 
minds us  that  one  of  his  chief  titles  to  his  high  rank 
as  a  novelist  is  an  extraordinary  imagination.  It  is 
an  imagination  remarkable  not  only  for  exuberance  but 
for  scope.  Like  every  other  phase  of  his  talent  it  is 
unchecked,  but  it  is  unmistakably  both  opulent  and 
acute.  Its  exercise  gives  one  the  feeling  that  he  is 
never  at  a  loss  for  incident  or  motive,  and  makes  that 
effect  of  inexhaustible  fulness,  of  self-renewing  poten- 
tiality, of  there  being  plenty  more  left  in  his  sack,  which 

278 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

is  a  definite  mark  of  genius.  He  never  "  saves  for  the 
next  book,"  as  Mr.  Henry  James  says.  One  feels  the 
assurance  that  he  never  needs  to  save.  Novelty,  and 
significant  novelty,  is  his  element.  He  is  never  at  a 
loss  for  a  theme — a  real  theme,  capable  of  organic  and 
intricate  elaboration  and  having  itself  interest  and 
vitality.  Details  spring  spontaneously  into  flower  in 
fertile  profusion  along  the  path  of  its  development. 
He  must  be  the  envy  of  the  more  strictly  professional 
novelists.  One  understands  the  reported  remark  of 
Mr.  Stevenson :  "  He  is  the  master  of  all  of  us."  In 
imagination  "Harry  Kichmond"  certainly  stands  at 
the  head  of  the  modern  fiction  that  essays  the  difficult 
task  of  enduing  with  vivid  realistic  intensity  material 
of  the  most  exceptionally  romantic  character.  It  was 
probably  the  first  of  the  genre.  "  Kidnapped,"  "  Treas- 
ure Island,"  "  Prince  Otto,"  "  St.  Ives "  derive  from  it 
very  strictly.  It  is  the  result  of  the  imagination  com- 
bined with  thought,  with  reflection — the  imagination 
which  has  a  strong  tincture  of  intellect,  whose  luxuri- 
ance though  unrestrained  is  directed  by  a  sophisticated, 
or  at  least  the  literary,  inspiration.  It  reminds  us  that 
Mr.  Meredith's  imagination  is  kept  too  well  in  hand 
for  pure  spontaneity.  It  is  the  servant  of  his  artifice. 
His  invention,  which  is  of  an  astonishing  activity,  out- 
runs it.  Half-way  through  "Harry  Eichmond,"  for 
example,  it  flags,  and  a  little  further  fails  altogether, 
though  the  author's  mechanical  inventiveness  increases 
proportionally  in   intricacy  and   endeavor  for  plausi- 

279 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

bility.  The  spontaneity  with  which  the  story  started 
and  which  stimulated  its  remarkable  rapidity  of  move- 
ment and  variety  of  detail  has  exhaled,  and  for  a 
couple  of  hundred  pages  we  drag  along  with  gradually 
diminishing  momentum. 

I  have  said  that  his  world  is  not  a  real  one  and  it 
is  not.  It  is  an  extremely  artificial  one.  But  his 
imagination  endues  it  with  indubitable  animation.  It 
is  animate  like  that  of  the  Restoration  drama,  for 
which  he  has  a  weakness,  and  which,  in  spite  of  the 
robustness  of  many  of  the  typical  characters,  is  often 
similarly  unreal.  One  could  form  but  a  faint  concep- 
tion, for  example,  of  how  his  "  puppetry  "  (his  word  for 
Thackeray's  people)  would  look,  or  what  they  would 
say  or  do,  should  they  all  meet  at  some  large  party  in 
"  fable-land."  Yet  it  is  eminently  "  fable-land  "  that  is 
their  home.  Nothing  is  more  curious  than  the  va-et- 
vient  of  Mr.  Meredith's  figures,  pulled  by  general 
rather  than  individual  psychological  strings,  amid  the 
highly  poetized  fields  and  woods  and  highways  and 
sea-shores  that  his  fancy  furnishes  for  their  play- 
ground. 

His  poetic  faculty  is  very  clear  and  very  distin- 
guished. As  exhibited  in  his  formal  verse  it  is  per- 
haps too  surcharged  with  significance  to  have  the 
plastic  interest  essential  to  verse.  It  is  in  form  so 
convoluted  as  often  to  be  obscure  to  the  point  of  being 
unreadable.  But  he  is  a  great  landscape-painter.  He 
has  the  poet's  concrete  vision.     He  never  indulges  in 

280 


GEOEGE   MEREDITH 

the  rhapsody  of  the  rhetorician.  Some  of  his  descrip- 
tions of  nature  are  extremely  beautiful,  even  memor- 
able, in  their  combined  radiance  and  precision.  Oc- 
casionally, one  reflects,  they  are  a  httle  too  important. 
Not  only  are  they  digressions,  like  his  famous  "  wine " 
and  "  ale  "  excursions,  but  now  and  then,  though  back- 
ground, they  exchange  values  with  the  figures.  But 
Mr.  Meredith's  background,  landscape  aside,  is  in  gen- 
eral as  unreal  as  his  figures,  and  contributes  to  the  net 
artificial  impression  made  by  his  books.  It  is  rarely 
localized,  in  the  sense  of  reference  to  actual  places. 
Any  of  his  action  might  take  place  anywhere.  Mainly 
it  takes  place  in  England,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but 
there  is  no  specific  picture  of  the  real  England  of 
town  or  country.  It  might  equally  well  have  occurred 
in  Barataria.  The  contrast  with  the  background  of 
Dickens  and  Thackeray,  Trollope  and  George  Eliot  is 
in  this  respect  very  great.  It  is  true  that  when  his 
background  is  landscape  Mr.  Meredith's  poetic  faculty 
gives  it  a  reality  of  its  own,  an  imaginative  reality. 
But  in  his  novels  his  poetic  faculty  is  almost  altogether 
consecrated  to  the  service  of  nature — nature  and  now 
and  then  the  youthful  feminine  countenance,  as  where 
in  "Beauchamp's  Career"  he  deliciously  describes 
Eende's  features  as  having  "the  soft  irregularities 
which  run  to  rarities  of  beauty,  as  the  ripple  rocks 
the  light."  In  dealing  with  character  he  explicitly 
abandons  it  to  grasp  at  purely  intellectual  interest,  at 
what  he  calls  and  worships  as  "Philosophy."     "Phi- 

281 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

losophy "  and  consequent  preoccupation  with  "  brain- 
stufif "  is,  he  says  in  the  introduction  to  "  Diana " — a 
little  naively  perhaps  for  so  true  a  dilettante — the  one 
ingredient  needful  in  the  composition  of  fiction  hereto- 
fore neglected  even  by  such  a  Titan  as  Thackeray,  but 
hereafter  to  be  supplied  by  himself  in  spite  of  the  aver- 
sion to  it  of  the  philistine  British  pubUc.  Unfortu- 
nately for  his  theory,  his  own  practice,  at  any  rate, 
results  in  the  more  or  less  gradual  transformation  of 
imagination  into  mere  invention,  so  that  the  animation 
of  his  characters,  which  at  the  outset  is  often  active 
enough,  owing  to  the  vivacity  of  his  conception  of 
them  (owing,  that  is  to  say,  to  his  imagination),  de- 
clines into  distinctly  mechanical  movement  (which  is 
all  that  invention  can  command).  In  a  word,  his 
imagination,  even,  has  its  factitious  side.  -'  ^ 

IX  >  Y^ 

His  most  unimpeachable  claim,  one  is  finally  forced 
to  conclude,  is  his  general  intellectual  eminence.  About 
that  there  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt.  It  is  lofty,  defi- 
nite and  impressive.  No  novelist  has  so  many  ideas. 
He  is  the  embodiment  of  culture,  but  he  is  absolutely 
independent,  and  does  his  own  thinking  with  noticeable 
care  and  self-reliance.  His  learning,  his  reading,  is 
obviously  very  great,  but  it  is  thoroughly  assimilated. 
He  has  no  pedantries ;  his  recondite  allusions,  though 
frequent,  are  always  sincere  and  apt.     His  training  has 

282 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

been  of  the  broadest;  his  Continental  education  is 
easily  seen  in  his  point  of  view,  his  freedom  from  pro- 
vinciaUty  of  any  kind,  the  untrammelled  and  untradi- 
tional  character  of  his  criticism,  his  very  notable 
elasticity.  Full  as  he  is  of  whims,  he  has  no  prejudices. 
His  candor  is  a  conspicuous  trait,  and  the  reader  comes 
insensibly  to  rely  upon  it  —  a  circumstance  that  in- 
creases the  exasperation  produced  by  the  odd  conjunc- 
tion with  his  candor  of  his  perversity.  And  —  an 
unusual  combination,  perhaps  —  he  unites  with  this 
distinction  of  culture  a  wholly  extraordinary  power 
of  insight.  His  penetration  is  wonderfully  acute. 
And  human  character  is  its  true  field.  One  can  hardly 
overpraise  him  here.  At  every  turn  you  are  reminded 
of  his  having  noted  some  peculiarity  of  thought,  some 
trait  ehcited  by  certain  circumstances,  phenomena  of 
mind  and  motive  that  you  at  once  recognize  as  true 
and  often  as  recondite  as  well.  A  large  proportion  of 
his  readers,  at  least  his  admiring  readers,  probably  en- 
joy the  experience  of  saying  to  themselves  every  few 
pages :  "  Ah !  He  knows  that,  too,  it  seems.  I  have 
never  encountered  that  in  any  other  writer.  This  I 
have  myself  remarked,  but  had  supposed  it  my  own 
discovery.  How  odd  that  I  should  never  have  thought 
of  that,  but  how  true  it  is ! "  And  active-minded  read- 
ers have  few  experiences  more  enjoyable. 

He  does  not,  often,  perhaps,  make  you  think.  He 
does  not  in  general  stimulate  reflection.  He  is  always 
actively  thinking  himself,  but  after  you  have  thought 

283 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

out  his  meaning  on  occasions  when  it  is  obscure  you 
are  apt  to  relapse  into  rumination  at  best.  In  this  re- 
spect he  is  the  antithesis  of  George  Eliot,  for  example, 
whose  pregnant  observations  have  the  property  of 
starting  trains  of  thought.  Moreover,  his  gift  of  ex- 
pression leads  him  to  leave  nothing  to  the  reader. 
In  cases  where  he  does  not  dissemble  his  meaning 
through  perversity,  his  power  of  explicit,  and  tendency 
to  exuberant,  expression  exhaust  the  subject.  Take 
him  at  his  best :  "  That  excruciating  twist  within  of 
the  revolution  of  the  wheels  of  the  brain  snapping  their 
course  to  grind  the  contrary  to  those  of  the  heart." 
Excellent  as  this  is  —  "  grind  "  is  particularly  penetrat- 
ing and  graphic  —  it  has  hardly  the  suggestiveness  of 
such  a  chance  phrase  as  George  EHot's  "  early  morning 
tears,"  or  Thackeray's  mere  association  of  "  women 
and  priests."  And  in  general,  I  think,  if  his  observa- 
tions on  human  life,  character,  relations,  have  a  defect 
corresponding  to  their  admirable  quality,  it  is  that,  spite 
of  their  penetration,  they  lack  what  the  French  call 
porUe.  They  have  a  distinct  tendency  to  note  peculi- 
arities. They  are  the  result  of  scrutiny,  many-faceted 
and  never  partial,  but  not  of  the  comprehensive  gaze 
that  sees  psychologic  detail  as  part  of  a  vaster  whole 
which  it  keeps  ever  in  mind.  If  they  were,  one  would 
find,  as  one  rarely  if  ever  does,  the  same  observation 
recurring  from  time  to  time,  as  different  situations 
bring  out  the  same  central  truth.  The  kind  of  thing 
one  generally  findi  —  and  delights  in  —  in  Mr.  Mere- 

284 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

dith  is :  "  Men's  faith  in  a  woman  whom  her  sisters  dis- 
countenance and  partially  repudiate  is  uneasy,  however 
deeply  they  may  be  charmed.  On  the  other  hand,  she 
may  be  guilty  of  prodigious  oddities  without  much  dis- 
turbing their  reverence,  while  she  is  in  the  feminine 
circle."  Or :  "  The  attempt  to  read  an  inscrutable 
woman  allows  her  to  dominate  us  too  commandingly." 
Or :  "  Euffling  and  making  that  pretence  at  the  con- 
trolling of  her  bosom  which  precedes  a  feminine  storm." 
Nevertheless,  Mr.  Meredith's  books  spread  out  be- 
fore one  a  multifarious  network  of  circumstance  and 
situation  whose  reaction  on  that  most  interesting  of  all 
impression-registering  media,  human  nature,  is  subtly, 
sapiently,  always  elaborately  considered.  There  are 
a  half-dozen  pages  in  the  fifth  chapter  of  "  The  Tragic 
Comedians,"  for  instance,  dealing  with  the  effect  upon 
lovers  of  their  mistresses'  previous  experiences  of  the 
heart,  that  constitute  a  kind  of  essay  on  the  subject 
such  as  would  make  the  fortune  of  many  a  "  psychologi- 
cal novelist."  There  are  passages  everywhere  in  all  his 
books  that  show  the  acutest  discrimination  and  the 
subtlest  philosophical  generalizing.  Gathered  into  an 
anthology  of  his  "  wit  and  wisdom,"  as  they  have  been, 
they  are,  to  be  sure,  easily  less  striking ;  "  The  Pilgrim's 
Scrip  "  is  not  a  serious  rival  of  La  Eochefoucauld.  Their 
significance  has  more  relief  when  one  meets  them  swim- 
ming in  the  stream  of  the  author's  prolixity,  where 
they  seem  like  "glorious  islets"  and  gain  meaning  by 
contrast;  but  here  their  unexpected  solidity  is  very 

285 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

effective.  In  a  word,  whatever  one's  impressions  of 
Mr.  Meredith's  novels  as  novels,  they  indubitably  con- 
tain a  great  deal  of  apt,  entertaining  and  original  com- 
ment upon  the  general  subject  of  human  nature. 

The  fact,  however,  has  two  modifications  which,  as 
constantly  as  itself,  are  forced  upon  the  reader's  atten- 
tion. In  the  first  place,  his  art  gains  nothing  or  next 
to  nothing  from  the  "  Philosophy "  to  which  he  is  so 
devoted.  This  not  only  quite  eclipses  his  art  in  inter- 
est, but,  being  so  essentially  of  a  generalizing  cast,  con- 
sisting so  exclusively  of  general  reflections  suggested 
by  the  specific  business  in  hand,  is  at  most  a  decoration 
rather  than  an  auxiliary  of  it.  His  philosophizing  is 
concrete  enough  in  itself,  but  it  is  so  used  as  to  render 
his  art  abstract.  It  saps  the  substance  and  obscures 
the  outline  of  his  characters  by  withdrawing  attention 
from  them  and  concentrating  it  on  "  the  human  heart " 
in  general,  its  various  phases  and  intricate  organization 
as  illustrated  by  the  personages  whom  it  should  rather 
itself  illuminate  and  explain.  What  is  Sir  Willoughby 
Patteme  but  incarnate  comment  on  the  text  of  egoism  ? 
In  a  word,  his  philosophy,  interesting  as  it  is,  weak- 
ens his  characterization  —  certainly  the  novelist's  main 
business. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  confined  to  psychological 
phenomena  —  undoubtedly  a  source  of  strength  within 
its  limits  but  in  itself  a  notable  limitation  of  his  range 
of  intellectual  interests.  There  are  some  politics  and 
social  economy  in  "  Beauchamp's  Career,"  but  in  the 

286 


GEORGE   MEREDITH 

other  novels  the  whole  intellectual  field  outside  of  the 
study  of  "  the  human  mechanism  "  is  neglected.  There 
is  an  occasional  reference  to  national  characteristics,  a 
rebuke  to  British  misconception  of  France  and  French- 
men here  and  there,  and  for  the  rest  a  quite  wonderful 
feehng  for  nature  and  a  remarkably  poetic  faculty  of 
concrete  portrayal  of  it.  No  "  questions  "  of  any  kind 
interest  Mr.  Meredith.  Itahan  unification  is  an  inspira- 
tion in  "  Vittoria  "  and  there  is  a  sympathetic  reference 
to  woman  suffrage  in  "  Diana."  But  such  tilings  do 
not  count  beside  the  conspicuous  fact  that  his  world, 
sharp  as  is  the  philosophic  shadow  that  it  casts,  has 
no  philosophic  penumbra.  Eeligion  does  not  enter  his 
realm  at  all.  Art  does  not  exist  there.  Philosophy,  as 
distinct  from  philosophizing,  has  no  attractions  for  him. 
He  has  no  system,  even  the  vaguest,  and  no  general 
synthesis.  His  "  criticism  of  life,"  though  penetrat- 
ing and  perhaps  consistent,  is  limited  and  above  all 
desultory.  No  one  would  think  of  calling  him  a  phi- 
losopher iu  any  strict  sense,  or,  outside  the  realm  of 
psychology,  in  any  sense  at  all.  He  has  eminently  no 
standing  as  a  sentimentaHst,  in  the  sense  in  which 
Eichardson,  Rousseau  and  Thackeray  are  sentimental- 
ists. As  a  moralist  he  has  no  direct  and  striking 
force.  His  novels  are  hardly  prevented  by  his  pro- 
fessed devotion  to  "  Philosophy  "  from  being  a  contribu- 
tion to  literature  of  the  "  art  for  art's  sake  "  order.  The 
Comic  Muse  exacts  his  exclusive  allegiance  in  treatment 
of  the  gravest  substance.     "  All  fables,"  says  Thoreau, 

287 


VICTORIAN  PROSE  MASTERS 

"  have  their  morals,  but  the  innocent  enjoy  the  story." 
Mr.  Meredith's  fables  have  no  morals,  which  is  perhaps 
the  reason  why  they  are  most  attractive  to  the  sophisti- 
cated. No  sucli  picture  of  human  life,  so  highly  organ- 
ized and  so  elaborately  commented,  was  ever  so  little  of 
a  text  for  deductions  of  real  moment  as  to  the  world 
of  which  it  is  ostensibly  a  miniature  and  a  criticism. 
And  this  being  the  case,  it  is  to  be  regretted  tliat,  since 
it  is  only  beauty  that  is  its  own  excuse  for  being,  the 
picture  is  not  more  artistically  effective  or  more  tem- 
peramentally compelling. 

j  His  imagination,  his  intellectual  eminence  and  his 
analytic  treatment  of  human  nature,  however,  give  his 
novels  a  rank  m  the  literature  of  fiction  which  neither 
his  constructive  art  nor  his  temperament  would,  unaided, 
win  for  them.  The  fact  itself  is  remarkable.  That  so 
really  imposing  an  edifice  as  his  varied  and  numerous 
books  compose  should  be  unsupported  by  either  of  these 
two  elements  of  enduring  strength  —  one  of  which  may 
be  lacking,  but  rarely  both  in  any  structure  of  monu- 
mental dignity,  literary  or  other  —  of  itself  constitutes 
one  of  the  most  interesting  of  literary  anomalies.  But 
what  one  misses  most  in  his  work  is  the  large  rhythm 
that  undulates  through  that  of  the  great  writers,  the 
sustained  note  of  informing  purpose,  the  deep  vibration 
of  some  unifying  undertone,  now  rising  to  accent  and 
emphasis,  now  sounding  faintly  beneath  the  multi- 
fariousness of  accompanying  motives,  but  always  audi- 
ble to  an  attentive  sense  as  the  basis  if  not  the  burden 

288 


GEORGE  MEREDITH 

of  the  "theme  with  variations"  that  the  ensemble  of 
every  great  writer's  compositions  constitutes.  Mr. 
Meredith  has  no  theme ;  he  has  a  dozen,  a  score  —  as 
many  as  he  has  books.  And  this,  I  imagine,  is  the 
standing  menace  to  the  increase  of  his  popularity  and 
the  permanence  of  his  fame. 


289 


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